Hope from the Future
by Traitor of All Traitors
Summary: When Shinji comes to, he finds himself in a place he knows shouldn't exist, and being destroyed by a creature that shouldn't exist. But does exist, and finds people being hurt by the devastation, so he fights for less than selfish reasons, to save the people. Will he find a way back to his world or will he have to survive in this new one? He has become a ronin in many ways.
1. In a Lake of Fire

Creation began on 08-15-15

Creation ended on 08-15-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: In a Lake of Fire

A/N: After watching the original film of the famous and infamous legend of the Nineteen-Fifties, it came to my attention that this was not attempted before. With my Hope from the Sky story achieving some success, I can hope for this story to achieve similar success. Here goes.

Sirens. For some reason, the disoriented Shinji Ikari, pilot of Evangelion Unit-01 and the Third Child of NERV in Tokyo-3, Japan, could hear sirens. But they weren't like the sirens he was used to hearing. They were like the kind you could hear in old films.

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrrraaurgh!" A roaring noise that was unlike anything he had ever heard before came and freed him from his disorientation, and he looked at his surroundings.

He was still inside the Entry Plug, still in his plugsuit, and switched the Eva from its life support setting into its active mode, allowing him to see through the Eva's visual systems. It was nighttime, but the setting was different; nowhere could Shinji see the tall buildings that represented Tokyo-3, and the buildings he could see were engulfed in flames…or being demolished by a large reptile that looked as though it were from an age long forgotten.

 _My God,_ he thought, seeing the creature was now approaching him (or the Eva, to be precise).

"We'll be with your father soon," he heard a woman's voice right then, and turned the Eva's head to look down at a woman with three children with her, frightened to the point of being unable to run away from here. "Just a little while, and then we'll be with Daddy."

Turning to face the creature again, Shinji checked the power regulator of the Eva, seeing that it had at least four minutes of power in its reserves, and knew what he had to do. Willing the Eva up onto its feet, the boy that should've been facing an Angel classified as the Twelfth Angel some time ago was now going to face a creature that resembled that of a dinosaur made as big as fifty meters in height, towering over the majority of the buildings present. Even if it seemed hopeless, he knew he had to do something. He couldn't just let innocent people die.

-x-

It was unbelievable! Hard to get around! But it was happening in front of the Japanese! Some sort of giant, purple robot had fallen from the sky in the dead of the night…and was now looking as though it were going to face Godzilla!

Civilians running away, but turning around every chance they got to see what would or could transpire that they didn't want to miss. Military officials retreating to avoid being trampled or incinerated by Godzilla, wondering if this giant could do what they couldn't.

The giant suddenly removed something from one of its shoulders and it took the form of some sort of knife with a glowing blade.

-x-

Yes, even if it did seem hopeless for him to try, Shinji had to protect the people that he could protect from this monster.

"Aaaurgh!" He yelled as he willed the Eva to charge towards the beast, his Prog. Knife held low to stab the creature in its abdomen. _Hopefully, it's not armored to deflect the knife!_

The beast unleashed a mist of fire at the Eva and set its arms and front ablaze, but even as its human pilot felt the sting of the flames, it didn't impede its charge in the slightest.

PIERCE! The knife penetrated the scaly abdominal cavity of the monster!

"Rrrrrrrrrrrrraaaurgh!" It shrieked in immense pain; it was almost as painful as the horrid experience it had with the great fire that had immersed it not too long ago. "Rrrrraaurgh!"

It unleashed its stream of burning mist again, hoping to force this horned enemy back.

"Aaargh! Urgh! Aaaurgh!" Shinji groaned in agony as the high synchronization made him feel like he was literally being set on fire. "Aaaaurgh! Take…this!"

SLICE! The Prog. Knife was pushed upward in the dinosaur-like creature, and ripped out through what used to be its neck and jaw that had been split in half, spraying blood everywhere.

As the timer showed only two minutes of power left, Shinji prayed for the creature to not be invincible or come back to life.

In five seconds, the monster fell backwards and crashed into a burning building, consumed by the flames it had caused to spread.

-x-

It just knelt there on the street, not moving at all. Even as the Fire Department did all that it could to put out the flames that had consumed much of the city. It was like it had no reason to even consider attacking the people that thought of gathering around it, even those with injuries in need of medical treatment.

In front of it, in the remains of the destroyed building, were the charred remains of the monster that had been attacking the country's ships and cities ever since its existence was made known to the nation.

Suddenly, the back of the purple giant opened up and released a long, white tube, which then opened up. The civilians present were shocked to see a child come out of the giant, looking like he'd been through Hell and back again. The child was dressed in what looked like a diving suit of some sort with an apparatus attached to its front and back, with a pair of white objects hanging on his head.

"Is…is everyone okay?" He had asked them, and then passed out.

To be continued…

A/N: And this shall be the first chapter of a new crossover. What do you think of Shinji's reason for facing the force of nature in this story? Do review until the next chapter.


	2. The Day of Recovery

Creation began on 08-15-15

Creation ended on 08-16-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Time of Recovery

Feeling like an over-exerted wreck, Shinji awoke to the smell of burnt flesh and blood in the air, hearing people moaning in agony or children crying in despair. He found that he was on a small cot among others from wherever he was, still in his plugsuit and those that were unharmed going about their duties.

 _Where…am I?_ He wondered, and lost consciousness again.

-x-

The military and several scientists gathered around what used to be Godzilla, and the purple giant, confirming that the organic beast was dead, but were unsure of what to make of the humanoid construct.

Doctor Yamane looked at the fallen survivor of the atomic bombardment that occurred in the last war, feeling regret that such an opportunity to study the organism would be greatly reduced.

The purple giant remained in the kneeling position it had been in when they saw the young boy emerged from its back, having passed out due to fatigue and hunger, and they were baffled by what it was and how it worked.

"…That boy saved us," said a soldier, referring to the child of the giant.

"But who is he and what is this giant he was inside of?" Another soldier questioned.

-x-

Feeling someone getting him up against his will and shaking him, Shinji woke up and saw a female nurse shaking him by his shoulders. He raised his arms to make her stop, and she let him go, picking up a small bowl of cereal.

"Here, eat this," she ordered him to do, and he accepted the bowl from her.

It wasn't exactly tasty for him, but this was a hard time for everyone, so he held his tongue about it. And he hadn't eaten since his last meal, before he went up against the last Angel and wound up here. But what left him unsure about anything that was going on around him was the lack of information being afforded to him; he wanted to know where he was and what was going on.

"Where…am I?" He asked the nurse, but she had left him to help the other injured or sick people that were in need of aid. "Where am I?"

-x-

"…We shouldn't treat him like he's some kind of criminal," a woman said during an investigative meeting between the government and the public.

"We don't know who he is or what he's doing here," a man expressed, clearly on the side of the government. "For all we know, he could be a spy for the Americans."

"We don't know that for sure," said another man in response to this, on the side of the public. "We don't know anything about this kid…until we hear from him who he is and everything."

"We should hear from the child, then," a man on the government's side to properly investigate the boy and confirm who he was.

"He came to a few hours ago," another woman revealed in the meeting, "and he's been asking where he is, but receiving no answer."

-x-

Several police officers came into the overflowing hospital where Shinji was taken to…and escorted him out.

Shinji, naturally, was confused about why they had come for him, as nobody said atop him beyond the order to go with them. When they arrived to a building and he was escorted to a room and told to wait there, he was sure he was to be interrogated by the people he decided to protect that night he saw the monster. He sat down in one of the chairs present, waiting for whoever was to see him.

Suddenly, the door to the room opened and he saw several men and women enter. They sat down around the table and looked at the boy.

"Hello, young man," the man on the opposite side of the table greeted Shinji.

"Hello, sir," Shinji replied.

"We'll make this short and simple," a woman expressed to Shinji. "We just want to know who you are and what that giant is. You understand, don't you?"

"Yes, ma'am," Shinji answered her.

"Your name?" The man questioned.

"My name is Shinji Ikari."

"Your nationality?"

"Japanese."

"Date of Birth?"

"June Sixth, Two-Thousand-One."

"Two-Thousand-One?"

"Yes, sir."

The people murmured to one another around Shinji, and he was left to wonder if they thought he was crazy.

"Um, Mr. Ikari…do you know what year it is?" The woman asked him.

"It's…Twenty-Fifteen…isn't it?" He answered, which resulted in further murmurs from the people in the room.

"You say Twenty-Fifteen…as in Two-Thousand-Fifteen, right?" The woman asked him again.

"That's right," he answered again.

"Oh, dear," sighed the man. "Mister Ikari, this may come as a shock to you…but the year is Nineteen-Fifty-Four. It's been almost ten years after the war."

"Nineteen-Fifty-Four? The war? You mean, World War Two?"

"Yes."

 _But that would that_ _…_ _that I've somehow traveled through time,_ Shinji realized. _How can this be possible? How can I have traveled backwards in time? Could it have been due to the Angel?_

"Mister Ikari, the time you say you're from," went the man again. "The year Twenty-Fifteen, as you say… What is the future like?"

"In the future…half the world is dead."

"Half the world is dead?"

That was when Shinji just revealed all that he knew to these people of the past. He left nothing out in his revelation; he told them about the war he was forced into by his father to face giant creatures called Angels, about how he was abandoned by his father. By the year Two-Thousand, a catastrophe in the Antarctic (he revealed as people experimenting on a creature referred to as the First Angel, causing it to explode and melt the ice) that caused the ocean levels to rise dramatically, flooding many coastal cities and the destruction of Tokyo by a nuclear bomb, the throwing of the planet off its axis, forcing the Japanese nation into perpetual summertime, and how, by the time of the year Twenty-Fifteen, even though some of society had been able to rebuild, there were no attempts made to reclaim lands ravaged by the destruction and few people to lead the world into whatever future there was worth living for.

"What led the world to become so crippled?" Another woman questioned.

"I don't know why people of that time decided to find such a creature and experiment on it," Shinji responded to her. "Maybe it was their curiosity. A woman I used to know…or rather, a woman who doesn't even exist right now, her father, who probably doesn't even exist, either, was part of the expedition that discovered and experimented on the creature. Maybe it was unintentional, but he and his expedition caused what was referred to as the Second Impact. Now, Second Impact because the organization my father ran, NERV, believed in the Giant Impact story and ran with the false truth of the cause being a meteorite striking the Antarctic and melting the icecaps. There were just too many secrets and half-truths…and never enough honesty."

Then, Shinji just realized something that he needed to ask and know about.

"That creature I fought," he stated, "what was it? Do you know?"

"That creature," went Dr. Yamane, one of the men present during the meeting and interrogation, "was called Godzilla."

"Godzilla?"

"It was probably the only one of its kind, a survivor of the Hydrogen Bomb tests that took place almost a decade ago."

"From places like the Bikini Atoll?"

"Yes."

-x-

"So what will we do with the boy and his…Evangelion, sir?" A military commander asked the Prime Minister. "He doesn't strike me as a liar and he doesn't seem like the type of person suited for a life of war."

"If he is from the future, and something terrible did happen, he's our only link to that future."

"We're trying to contact people that may be related to the people he knew in his time, but it's hard to find people based on information from the future. Finding people related to people that just don't exist. Sixty-one years into the future, it's unlikely we'll find anyone, not even those close to relatives from either of his parents' families."

"And your opinion of the Eva?"

"It seems powerful in its own right, but it's years beyond our ability to comprehend. According to the boy, it runs on electricity, but only functions for less than five minutes and causes the pilot mental instabilities that lasts for several hours after being used for an extended period. Even if we could study it and create more for future use, it's probably better that it's put someplace where it can be preserved for a future use. According to the kid, it was somehow made to accommodate him and people born after this Second Impact that has yet to happen."

"And according to the boy, it was built on Japanese soil, so that makes it the property of the Japanese government. We need to keep it out of foreign hands and away from anyone that would try to use it for destructive purposes."

Soon enough, a woman came into the room and handed the commander a piece of paper and immediately left the room.

The commander looked at the paper and sighed.

"Trouble?" The Prime Minister asked.

"No," he responded. "We may have found somebody related to Shinji Ikari. A Mariko Ikari of the Ikari Clan."

-x-

Being permitted to be present as Unit-01 was being airlifted by several planes and helicopters to relocate it to a secure facility, Shinji, dressed in casual clothing close to what he was used to wearing outside of his plugsuit, sighed a breath of relief that the people were taking him a bit seriously when he said he was from the future. And also that they would try to find people related to those he knew from his timeline that no longer existed because nothing related to it made it possible to even begin. But the fact that he had gone back to before the time anyone he knew even existed meant that he was likely stuck in the past. Stuck in the past, far from those he either knew and cared for or just knew and loathed. His parents, his classmates, Misato, even Pen-Pen, all gone…because none of them or their relatives had been born yet.

Yet, a part of him, maybe his selfishness, felt a feeling of relief. It was relief for being in the past that relieved him of the obligation of fighting the Angels from his time…as well as his feelings of hatred towards his father. If the Angels weren't around, then the Eva wasn't needed, and if Second Impact hadn't occurred, that meant that NERV wasn't around, and neither was Tokyo-2 or Tokyo-3, for that matter.

 _It's like, I can finally breathe,_ he thought to himself, _for the first time in a long time._

To be continued…

A/N: Here's the second chapter. Who do you think this Mariko Ikari is? What do you think will happen to the Evangelion? What do you think the Japanese government will do now that they know all that Shinji has told them about the unwritten future that he was from? Read and review.


	3. The Ikari Clan

Creation began on 08-16-15

Creation ended on 08-21-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: The Ikari Clan

The drive across the country wasn't as boring for Shinji, as he took the time to view the scenic locale that hadn't been devastated by Godzilla or the people during the war. He was also learned that Japan was enjoying the effects of the post-war economic miracle that was happening before Godzilla appeared. One thing he had to wonder about, though, was what these people that he might have been related to were like, since this would be his first meeting with them.

"Nervous about meeting them?" A military official asked him.

"Huh? Um, yes, I am nervous," he answered him. "What am I supposed to say when I see them?"

"You should just be yourself."

"That's hard for me to do. I don't know who I've really been in years."

"Oh, yeah, because of your absentee parents, right?"

"That's right."

"Well, I'm sure these people will be pleased to see you. You saved the country from a threat of massive proportions when you fell from the sky."

"I'm not a hero. The real heroes are the ones that do right every day. The police, the doctors, teachers and the Good Samaritans. I just saw a mother and her children…and heard her say to them that they were going to be with their father soon. The fact that she had just given up on trying to get away from Godzilla was what motivated me to try and stop it from hurting more people. I didn't want any more people to suffer from something that wasn't their fault."

"In a world plagued with insanity," the driver expressed, "that is a choice for one of sanity."

"Thank you," Shinji praised him.

It was another hour before the car stopped in front of an estate that had been built by a cliff (A/N: Think of the Yashida home from _The Wolverine_ , only larger). It was beautiful to Shinji, like a temple or shrine that survived the ravages of war.

The front gate opened up to allow the car entry, and Shinji saw a nice garden on the right side of the car as they drove past it, stopping in front of a building with an expansive front porch.

Standing on it was a man in his early-thirties, dressed in a blue and gray hakama, holding a sheathed katana in front of him, and he seemed worn by past experiences with his grayish-black hair and green eyes that looked as though they saw much.

"Hello, sir," Shinji greeted the man, standing in front of him.

"Hello," he responded, never looking at him, but out at the world in front of them.

The front doors behind him opened up and out came two women, one in her early-twenties, dressed in a casual dress, with long, ebony hair and blue eyes, and the other around Shinji's age, dressed in a blue kimono with a black diamond pattern, with reddish-black hair and brown eyes.

"Hello, young man," the elder woman greeted Shinji. "Are you Shinji Ikari?"

"Yes, ma'am," he answered her.

"Welcome to the Ikari estate. I'm Juna Ikari. I see you've met Botou, my brother, and this is my cousin, Mariko, who found out about you."

"Hello, Ms. Mariko," Shinji greeted the young girl, extending his right hand in front of her.

Mariko looked at him and then his hand…and then shook it.

"Call me Mariko, please," she told him. "I'm only fourteen."

"Um…yes, Mariko."

-x-

"…So, he just appeared out of the sky and fell to the ground in Tokyo," said Juna to the military official in a room full of books, "and fought the monster that was attacking?"

"Yes, ma'am," he explained to her. "The city owes him a debt of gratitude for his service to the people. We were lucky he appeared when he did."

"When people begin to lose faith in seeing the light of day," Juna expressed, "sometimes, the gods will perform mysterious miracles that are often overlooked for something else."

As the two conversed, Mariko showed Shinji around the estate.

"We strive to be traditional," she told him, leading him out into the backyard near a koi fish pond. "One eye looks into the past, and the other into the future."

"Wisdom from the past helps to shape the minds of the future?" Shinji asked her.

"Something like that. What was the future like when you were there?"

Shinji stopped by the pond and stared at her.

"You don't think I'm a liar or suffer from delusions or anything?" He asked her.

"You look at someone and don't know a thing about them until after you've spent time with them," she explained to him. "I've only just met you…so I need to know who you are in order to understand you and the world you came from in the land beyond tomorrow. So…whenever you wish to share your past…which is in the future."

Shinji felt like talking about the future could drive him crazy just thinking about it, as there were things that hadn't happened yet, people that weren't born yet, and the possibility of knowing what can happen beforehand changing the future.

"In the future," he stated in front of her, "the country is trapped in perpetual summertime, with so many cicadas being heard everyday. Much of the land is underwater, and I didn't live with either of my parents or have much of a life."

"What were your parents like?"

"I never knew a thing about my mother. I don't even have a picture of her, as my father threw away anything that belonged to her. My father was unkind, even to me. Never a kind word, no matter what time of the day it was. He just left me with a teacher after my mother died and I never had much contact with him for over ten years. Then, out of the blue, he sends for me to come see him…only to exploit me into facing a monster that arrived on the same day."

"No friends?"

"None."

"Not even one?"

"Nobody."

Mariko gave him a small smile.

"You poor, poor soul," she called him. "I can't see how it is you were able to survive without a friend in your time."

"I simply did as I was told most of the time. I hated doing so, but it was the only way I knew to live."

"But you fought Godzilla without being told to. That was your decision, no one else's. That makes you a ronin."

"What is that?"

"A samurai without a master. A rurouni, on the other hand, is a wandering samurai with no destination of which to get to. But I think it would be crude to designate you as a rurouni, just a ronin."

"Thank you, Mariko."

Several feet away from them, standing by one of the sliding doors, Botou watched the pair as the boy seemed no different from a puppy being led by its owner.

-x-

It was a trying task, but the military was able to move Unit-01 out of the city and transport it to a secure location. At the same time, they were able to do the same with the decomposing body of Godzilla, which was believed to still be of scientific value due to the creature's ability to survive the repeated nuclear bombings.

"This animal may contain many answers to questions we have and don't have yet," said a man beside Yamane. "Maybe somewhere in its DNA lies the reason for its survival."

-x-

"I think you'll be fine with this room, Shinji," Juna told the young man as she showed him his room in the house.

"Thank you," he praised her, sitting in a chair next to a desk. "I didn't think to ask at first, but why are you called the Ikari Clan, if you mind my asking."

Juna inhaled and uttered, "It's because the majority of us come from different families all across the archipelago. Before the wars even occurred, the clan was just five families living together. Then an outsider was brought into the clan from another family that had been assassinated, all save for a little girl. She felt intimidated by the five families and like she didn't belong."

"That's saddening," Shinji told her.

"It is, but after three months, the people that assassinated her family came back to end her life. Unfortunately, they didn't succeed because our clan's ancestors lived and breathed self-defense and devotion to family and friends, willing to do whatever it took to keep everyone safe. They were executed and the girl was taken by their kindness that she called herself one of them…and towards the end of her life, she was one of them. One of us. So over the years, some people without families find their way to the clan and find a new life. Sometimes, they stay for years before moving on, other times, they stay for longer, even discarding their former names in favor of the name Ikari."

"Wow. How many of you are there now?"

"Currently, there are eight of us. Nine when we include yourself. Two of own brothers were in the war and didn't come back…and one of our sisters left shortly after it ended."

Shinji sighed over the cruelty of war and its fatality to people. It made him tell her that there wouldn't be another World War for decades, just smaller wars.

"Thank you for telling me that, Shinji," she told him, and then handed him a wrapped object. "Mariko wanted me to give you this. Goodnight, and see you tomorrow."

When he was left alone, he unwrapped the item and discovered it was a choker with a Taoist emblem representing balance. A smile broke out on his face as he placed it on his neck.

"Thank you, Mariko," he said, tracing his left hand's fingers on the emblem.

To be continued…

A/N: And with this, we see three members of the Ikari Clan: Juna, Botou and Mariko, and we learn that the clan of the past was once five families living together until they took in a girl.


	4. Memoirs of a Ronin

Creation began on 08-16-15

Creation ended on 08-20-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Memoirs of a Ronin

A/N: This is actually the fourth chapter of the story, but the third is in progress.

It had been two weeks since the destruction of the Twelfth Angel and a sizable portion of the city. In that time, NERV had to request the transfer of Evangelion Units-03 and 04 to replace the lost Unit-01.

Misato rarely had it in her to leave the apartment after the declaration of Shinji being KIA, but even she had a job to do.

Asuka and Rei were kept busy by the doubling of their synchronization schedules by Ritsuko, who needed to ensure that the remaining pilots were in top form against the remaining Angels.

In the aftermath of the Angel attack, not even a fake grave was made for Shinji to keep up the fact that his body was never recovered, as Gendo refused to permit such an act to be done, even for his son.

-x-

"Commander Ikari, sir!" A man in NERV uniform called out to the emotionally-detached leader of the the agency, carrying a folder.

"What is it?" Gendo asked, not wanting to be disturbed with such nonsense.

"My research group was digging around some old files, and we stumbled across this," the man explained. "These papers date back over sixty years, and they were written by someone named Shinji Ikari."

"That's not possible," Gendo expressed. "Give the folder to Fuyutsuki. I have no time for old files from long ago."

As ordered, the employee delivered the folder to Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, who had to look at its contents for the sake of informing the commander. But what he found was beyond what he knew as unbelievable.

-x-

Misato was unsure why Fuyutsuki wanted her to come see him at the base, but he said he had some important information that she needed to see. As she walked down the hall to his office, she thought of Shinji and what his last thoughts were when the Angel was destroyed.

"You wanted to see me, sir?" She asked the elder, stepping into his office.

"Yes, Major Katsuragi," Fuyutsuki answered her, and pointed over to his desk where the folder's contents were scattered around its surface. "Someone was looking around the old files, and this was found. It dates back over sixty years."

"Okay, but what does that have to do with NERV?"

"Look at the name that's highlighted on the papers."

Misato went over to his desk and picked up one of the papers, looking at a name that had been highlighted long ago…and saw Shinji's name on it, and the date that was highlighted was taken some time during the year Nineteen-Fifty-Four. She picked up another page, showing a picture, and saw that it was Shinji, just as he was before the last Angel attack, standing in front of the National Diet Building of Tokyo, surrounded by some government officials, military officials, and civilians.

"Could this all be fabricated?" She asked Fuyutsuki.

"I checked the dates and the signatures, and they were all authentic. There's no way they were fabricated. Is there any way you can explain how the Third Child is in a photo dating back to the Nineteen-Fifties when these papers are over fifty years old?"

Misato thought about it, and only one possibility came to mind.

"The Twelfth Angel," she expressed. "Somehow, it must've sent him back in time to before the Second Impact, and he was unable to return when it was defeated, so he spent the rest of his life in the past."

"Here's a copy of something you should have a look at," he said, showing her a paper with another signature.

She examined it, and uttered, "This is a marriage license. He was married at some point?"

"Yeah, to someone named Mariko Ikari. Apparently, there were other relatives his mother's side that some of them weren't involved with over the years, before and after World War Two."

-x-

Gendo, after Fuyutsuki and Katsuragi informed him, didn't want to believe it was possible, but the proof was right there for him to see. His son wound up in the past and was unable to return to the present because the last Angel's destruction prevented him from doing so.

"Have we tried to find him?" He asked Ritsuko in his office.

"Not yet," she responded. "If he is still alive, he'd be around sixty-one."

"But how could he have survived Second Impact or live in obscurity since the years after the second war?" Fuyutsuki questioned.

"If this is time travel we're talking about here, how can we be certain that he didn't try to change history if he had the chance to?" Ritsuko questioned.

"Some believe that the history aspect of time is immutable, like a river," Fuyutsuki expressed. "You can toss a stone into a river, but the current always corrects itself, eliminating whatever ripples that exist. So, even if Shinji did try change history, there's little doubt that he could."

-x-

"…So that baka's alive?" Asuka asked Misato, who informed her of what she found out.

"We don't know for sure, Asuka," she told her. "All we know is that he somehow ended up stranded in the past and may have lived to the present."

"If that's true, then why didn't we see him after the Angel was defeated?"

"We're trying to find him."

"If I do see him, I intend to give him a piece of my mind."

"Oh, really, Asuka? You intend to give a sixty-one-year-older man a piece of your mind?"

Asuka then realized that if Shinji was alive, he'd be an elderly man by now. If he wound up in the past before Second Impact, he'd be older than any of them and will have probably moved on with his life.

-x-

It took three hours, but the MAGI found a match on the missing Third Child. A woman by the name of Mima Ikari, and, based on records salvaged from the aftermath of Second Impact, she was his eldest granddaughter.

"Currently, she resides in Sapporo, Hakkaido," Ritsuko, who found this information, relayed it to Gendo and Fuyutsuki. "A sample of her DNA was tested from blood she donated to a local blood drive…and it came back a match to the Third Child's."

"Hakkaido?" Fuyutsuki said. "That's among the only places untouched by the tsunamis caused by Second Impact. If he knew of this, he could've taken precautions against the catastrophe."

"Who should go see her?" Misato asked, as she had been informed; there was doubt that Gendo would go see this Mima Ikari, even though she is his great-granddaughter, and there was some doubt that NERV would be welcomed by her.

"I'll go," Fuyutsuki volunteered; this was only because he wanted to see for himself how the young boy had fared during his time in the past.

"Very well, then," Gendo accepted. "You and Major Katsuragi will go to Hakkaido to meet this woman and find out what she knows."

-x-

True to Fuyutsuki's words, Hakkaido was untouched by Second Impact, with the sole exception of the changes to the climate. The city of Sapporo was quite suited for an actual city for people to live in without worry from the Angels (since they only appeared to invade Tokyo-3, it would be among the only places in the entire archipelago that was safe to live in). This made Misato and Fuyutsuki wonder if Shinji did try to help people in the past in his own way, not just taking precautions.

"It's so beautiful here," Misato said as she drove the car up the hill.

"I've never been to Sapporo," went Fuyutsuki to her, looking at the large building that was Mima's current residence. "I probably wouldn't have minded living here before Second Impact."

They stopped the car and got out, entered the building and took an elevator to the ninth floor.

"Well, would you like to do the honors, Sub-Commander?" Misato asked the elder as they stood in front of the apartment door.

Fuyutsuki sighed and pressed the doorbell.

The intercom lit up and a female voice uttered out, "Who is it?"

"Uh, this is Kozo Fuyutsuki and Misato Katsuragi," he answered the woman. "Is this Mima Ikari? We'd just like to talk with her."

The door unlocked and opened to reveal a woman in her late-thirties, with long, ebony hair and blue eyes.

"Purple hair," she said, looking at Misato. "Grandfather always said that was a rarity in Japan."

"Your grandfather? Do you mean Shinji Ikari?" Misato asked her.

"That's right. Did you know him? When he was younger?"

"Was this him?" Fuyutsuki asked her, showing a picture they had of Shinji from his NERV file.

The woman looked at the picture and sighed.

"My husband once made a negative comment on how Grandfather seemed androgynous in his youth," she expressed, "that he could pass for a girl pretending to be a boy. Please, do come in."

She let them inside, and they sat down in the living room area.

"Mother wanted to name me Mitsuko, but my father and grandfather insisted on naming me Mima because it was more serene. So…what was your relationship with Grandpa Shinji like?"

Fuyutsuki sighed heavily, as he expressed that he didn't have much of a relationship with Shinji, having spent the majority of the time never engaging him in even one conversation.

"…I wish I had gotten the chance to back then," he finished.

"Well, you must have had some impact on him, for he did try to find you a while ago," Mima told him. "What about you, Ms. Katsuragi? He did mention you being his guardian for a time."

"I'm sorry, but why do you keep speaking of him in the third person?" Misato asked her.

"Because he passed away last year," Mima answered her, pointing to a mantle place behind her where an urn stood near a lit incense candle. "He'd be about seventy-five this year, you know."

 _So, he's dead,_ thought Misato, feeling depressed about the fact that her former ward was gone.

 _I'm sorry, Yui,_ Fuyutsuki thought, wondering how his former student would be to know that her son was dead.

"He gave most of his life trying to keep people out of harm's way," Mima expressed. "He warned the Japanese government, told them what he knew, but it didn't make any difference in the end. Fate was unkind to him."

"You never once thought he was crazy or anything?" Misato asked.

"My father and grandmother said that there's a fine line between insanity and hope for a better future. To call or think of Shinji as crazy is to view him as a liar and a man that should've been incarcerated long ago. So, no, I never thought of him as crazy."

"He never wanted anything to do with the problem NERV has with the Angels," Misato revealed to her. "He had been kept in the dark about everything that was happening, never knowing what was going on until the last minute. And even when things got rough, he always tried to find a reason for everything he did."

"Grandfather claimed he would've been happier as a pacifist," Mima revealed, "but, as before, fate was unkind to him. Part of the reason he hated anything to do with the violence he found himself in was because he didn't want to be the direct cause of others getting hurt. I always believed that he belonged in a different era of existence because the ones where people believe that violence is the only solution are just too brutal for him."

"Every time he had an opportunity to walk away, he was always fighting for us," Fuyutsuki told her. "Every time he wanted to leave, he was made to stay."

Suddenly, the sound of the door opening was heard, and the three saw a little girl that reminded the visitors of a younger version of Shinji, dressed in a sailor fuku with shorts under the skirt.

"I'm home, Mama," she told Mima, which surprised Misato and Fuyutsuki; they didn't think Mima had any children of her own. "Who are they?"

"They're just old associates of your great-grandfather," Mima explained.

The girl then bowed her head to the two before going over to the mantle place and bowing her head to the urn of her great-grandfather.

"Um, you have a beautiful daughter, ma'am," Fuyutsuki told Mima.

"Thank you," she replied. "I could understand why Grandpa Shinji believed parenthood to be a blessing that needed to be embraced all the time."

"Why is that?" Misato wanted to know.

"Some people only want the best for their children, and he believed that nothing is better for them…than to just be there for them every day. Stability is a must, but it means nothing if you're not truly around for your family, and not just on holidays or during disasters. When you cherish every moment of the time spent with the people you love, that tells you that you're doing right by them. He never wanted to just know how his relatives were doing. He needed to see for himself how they were faring in their lives."

"Family meant a lot to him."

"Family meant everything to him. It was why he tried to keep the darkest parts of history from repeating themselves."

The little girl returned to the living room and approached her mother.

"Shinji's awake and he looks fussy," she told Mima.

She got up, excused herself for the moment, and left towards a hall. This act left her girl alone with the two visitors.

"Shinji?" Misato asked her, confused.

"My baby brother," she explained, "named after my great-grandfather."

Mima returned with a baby in her arms, wrapped in a green blanket.

Misato caught a peek at the infant and expressed that he was a cutie.

"Thank you," Mima praised her, and then introduced her daughter to the pair. "This is Aki."

Aki bowed her head to them again.

-x-

When Misato and Fuyutsuki returned from Sapporo, they brought back a box with them.

Contained within it was a series of diaries and video tapes; the memoirs of Shinji Ikari.

"Welcome back, Katsuragi," greeted Kaji to her, noticing the box in her hands. "How was the trip to Hakkaido? Were you able to find Shinji?"

"He wasn't there when we showed up, Kaji," she retorted. "Unless, of course, you're referring to his great-grandson who was named after him."

"Oh… And that right there?"

"His memoirs. These and an urn of his ashes are all that remain of him."

Kaji sighed and offered to take hold of the box for her.

"No thanks. I got it."

-x-

In her room, Asuka laid in her bed, wanting to be alone after being informed by Misato of the death of Shinji happening a year earlier before the Angels had returned.

 _Stupid Shinji,_ she thought, bitterly. _You end up in a time before Second Impact, live to see old age, have a family, and die, having tried to change history…and couldn't change anything. You stupid, stupid idiot._

Across the room from her bed was one of his diaries from he was in his twenties, detailing much of the life he had lived during his time in the past. One of the things he had described himself doing that was considered a great service to the Japanese was facing a creature that resembled an ankylosaurus made larger and more brutal.

In the living room, Misato popped in one of the video tapes from the box of memoirs and sat in front of the television set.

On the screen was an aged man who she knew was Shinji, right then and there.

"Yesterday was September Tenth," he said in front of the camera. "I spent a remarkable period dealing with another creature that belonged to an ecosystem that, kinda like myself, didn't belong, anymore. It looked like a dragon, but it had three heads and was a greenish-gold color. I kept reminding myself that I had to protect the people and my family from it until reinforcements arrived and we were able to drive it away. Every time I face a creature that isn't an Angel, I'm reminded of how different things are here. I actually got to see Tokyo Tower again. I defended the tower…again. Heh-heh, people probably get tired of these repeat offenses, tired of the fighting. I was called a ronin once more, and…maybe I am. I mean, I fight for the people, but I don't necessarily take orders from the government. A samurai without a master. It's been a miracle that I've been tolerated for this long since the Eva was put into a secret service degree for the country after the scientists sworn into secrecy about it found a way to recharge its internal battery and extend its duration to at least an hour."

Misato smiled at Shinji and his dedication to the people's safety.

"Oh, and I got my head handed to me again by Mariko for making her wait for my return. Sometimes, I feel like we're actually a married couple, and I haven't even proposed to her yet. Her father told me once that a flower that blooms in adversity is a rare thing, but then clarified it for me by saying that you don't meet a girl like Mariko every generation. I guess he doesn't like anyone keeping her waiting for them forever. Well, I may as well ask her out again. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to propose to her. Until next time."

The video cut off for a few minutes. Enough time for Misato to wipe away her tears.

"Stupid Shinji," she heard Asuka behind her. "You can't just go…and leave us like this."

-x-

"…The Japanese government had the Eva buried under one of the mountains in Hakkaido shortly before the end of the Nineteen-Eighties," went Ritsuko to Gendo, going over the information from one of the diaries left by Shinji. "We'll begin excavation and relocating it here as soon as possible."

Gendo didn't say anything, but Ritsuko understood that he heard everything he needed to hear from her, and dismissed herself from his office.

On his desk was an old picture of the elderly man that was his son, looking as though he lived a life filled with some greater meaning than any life associated to the Eva itself. He stood in front of a tree with a woman holding his right hand…and behind a younger woman that had to be their daughter or a friend. The setting was during the fall season, with the leaves on the tree a brownish-red color. At the lower right corner of the picture was the date it was taken, during the last year of the Twentieth Century.

To him, even though his son was gone, the Eva could still be salvaged, despite its potential decrepitude from the years it lacked its maintenance.

-x-

"…He was like a ronin," went Asuka to her classmates, informing them of Shinji's passing, not as the elder they never saw him as, but as the kid their own age. "He wasn't good with taking orders from anyone, but he was always trying to do something good with his life. Never wanting to be a hero or anything of the sort. In many ways, his ronin behavior made him like a saint or a pacifist, never wanting trouble from anyone or to cause trouble for anyone. That was the type of person Shinji Ikari was."

The students were silent, each one questioning how someone like Shinji could lose his life due to his duty to his country and to the world.

Everyone but Rei thought of Shinji as being dead; she just had a feeling of emptiness in her heart where her thoughts of Shinji would've been.

-x-

" _'…And as the night became day, I saw the cocoon open to reveal the beauty of the imago that had been a larvae that had survived the fall of its ancient realm,'_ " Misato read from a diary of Shinji's written during the Nineteen-Seventies, in front of the rest of the NERV personnel. " _'…And as it spread its mighty wings, I became convinced that it was truly of divine existence and to be worshipped by those that believed in it. I knew then that it was not an enemy to the world or the people. We needed to find the tiny ladies associated with Mothra if we wanted to end its rage against the people.'_ Shinji really had some adventures in the past."

"Maybe they were better than his present life here," expressed Kaji to her. "I mean, his past-present life here before his future became the past."

Ritsuko didn't say anything, as she and Misato were on uneasy ground after the decision was made to bombard the Angel with the entire arsenal of N² explosives that might've prevented Shinji from finding a way back to the present without having to take the long way.

"Still can't imagine how he managed to get by in the middle of the Twentieth Century," went Maya Ibuki. "It was such a primitive era back then."

"Does that diary say anything about the seasons in the past, Major Katsuragi?" Makoto Hyuga asked Misato.

"He made several comments about the winter season," she answered him. "He really found the winter and spring seasons to be more enjoyable than perpetual summer."

"Japan truly was better when it had seasons," said Fuyutsuki.

To be continued…

A/N: Quite a let down, huh? I may seem cruel for killing Shinji in his elderly years, but there is a reason for this that will be known in the future. However, this is still the fourth chapter, and the third chapter will be in progress soon.


	5. Regret

Creation began on 08-20-15

Creation ended on 08-23-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Regret

Sometimes, she wished she hadn't slapped him when he answered her question about having faith in Commander Ikari's work. Oftentimes, she wished she hadn't asked him that question to begin with. The fact that he was no longer around made it harder for Rei to accept that NERV was directly responsible for his displacement into the past and removal from the present and future.

 _And he said to never say goodbye like it would be the last time we would see each other again,_ she thought, looking out the classroom window at the world around the building.

-x-

The minor excavation of Mount Nakano went well, and NERV had succeeded in freeing the buried Evangelion that had been believed to have been lost by the Twelfth Angel. It looked as though it had been through century of service and no proper maintenance. The helmet had lost its horn, the torso armor was cracked, burnt and degraded, and its arms were heavily damaged, possibly due to its years of being buried for a long time.

"Contact NERV HQ," the man in charge of the excavation ordered another man. "Tell them that the Eva will be transported to Tokyo-3 in three days time."

-x-

"…Would you look at these pictures," said Misato to Kaji as they went over Shinji's memoirs, examining the photographs of the years the boy had spent with his family. "He's had four kids and three grandchildren over the course of his life."

"Here's another for the family album," went Kaji to her, passing another photo over.

Misato looked at it, and couldn't help but smile at the image; she never could've pictured Shinji picking up his wife when she had such a large belly.

"To think that the only place he'd find happiness was in the past before Second Impact. He was able to get away from a life that brought him no happiness in favor of one that did."

"And he did so without even trying," Kaji expressed. "Didn't you say that Asuka has one of his diaries written over the years?"

"Yeah."

-x-

In the diary, Asuka read on how Shinji had fought a pair of irradiated pterosaurs that he felt she would've probably enjoyed facing because they were red in color. How a volcano had erupted and nearly killed them both when one was injured and the other refused to leave it behind. Shinji had written how it may have went against his better judgment, but he chose to save the two pterosaurs instead of watching them die, as they were invaluable as research specimen instead of charred remains like the first Godzilla he had killed to save the rest of Tokyo at the time. The more she read, the more Asuka regretted trying to bully Shinji into facing the Twelfth Angel just because his synchronization score had surpassed hers that one time.

She missed him deeply, never anticipating that she would think about him as someone she cared for since they first met.

"Stupid Shinji," she said, unable to fight back the tears.

-x-

In the air over the water, a plane carrying the battle-damaged Unit-01 had passed through several bodies of clouds as it entered, doused in water vapor in the process. Several straps were tied around its arms and legs to keep it together for fear that it was loose in its structure after being in service without proper maintenance and later buried under several tons of dirt for years afterward. But once back in NERV HQ, it would get the maintenance it needed.

-x-

"…I got a face full of negativity for saving the two pterosaurs instead of letting them die," Shinji said in front of the camera, recording his thoughts on film. "As much as they were dangerous for their ability to fly at supersonic speeds, I just couldn't find it in me to kill them, and that they were more valuable alive than dead. It was no different from the battle with the second Godzilla years after the first one was killed by me. I try to think of the people, but the scientific value of these animals that should be dead can help us all in the future by being forewarned of their abilities. Each day that passes for me is still another day I have to remind myself of the possibility that the future I came from is still within reach, and that measures must be taken in order to try and prevent the harsh events from coming to pass. So far, the government has suspended any scientific endeavors or ventures in the South Pole, since they now know where Second Impact begins. I hope it's enough of the steps I'm taking to protect the people from losing their lives."

Misato, Kaji and Ritsuko watched the film, understanding what Shinji had done in his years. So far, whenever he wasn't being a normal person or with his family or this…Ikari Clan, he was protecting the country from giant monsters.

"A little girl from earlier had asked me if I was afraid of the Rodans more than the second Godzilla when he appeared," Shinji continued in front of the camera. "I told her that each monster frightens me only when they endanger the lives of the people. Maybe if they could be contained on an island with safety measures, everyone could be safe from them. That way, they could be studied by the scientists for their value…and the people would be kept safe from them…and maybe each other, as well."

"Yeah, he's so cautious about things," said Ritsuko, wondering if Second Impact dealt with these animals that he used the Eva to face.

"Yet, every time I get into a conversation with Dr. Yamane, I can't help but think he is in someway related to Dr. Akagi, due to their similar devotion to studying things. I still think he hates me for killing the first Godzilla when I showed up that night in Tokyo. Although, if I had to do it over again, I would kill it again if it meant saving the people of Japan, a choice I don't really regret much of. If it's between saving the people and studying a creature that could decimate the country… Then, it's better to help the people than to help those that put too much effort into studying something that could end them, even if it's to help the rest of the world. Science be damned."

"Looks like he developed a much lower opinion of scientists during his time in the past," Kaji expressed to Ritsuko, who seemed affected by Shinji's choice of words in his video diaries.

"I mean, there are two types of scientists," Shinji went on. "There are the benevolent ones that simply try to make people's lives better…and the mad ones that always want to find out what makes something tick for the sake of knowing…or just because they feel they can. I can respect the benevolent ones, but the mad ones are the crazies that could lead us all to extinction if they poked their noses into places better off left alone. That's why I'm hoping that they keep away from the South Pole."

"The good that did," Ritsuko retorted; she did a check on old files and found that a top-secret expedition had gone to the South Pole and did what Shinji tried to prevent.

"Tomorrow's another day, and one I get to live with the people I love."

-x-

Gendo stood in front of the salvaged Unit-01 as it was loaded into the Geo-Front, pleased with its return. It looked like it had seen better days, but he was certain that once it was repaired, it would see combat against the Angels once more.

As the Eva touched the ground, its helmet fell off, exposing its degraded under skin to the air.

"I think he had hopes that this would never see the light of day again," went Fuyutsuki to Gendo.

"It's necessary for NERV to have the Evas to fight the Angels," Gendo responded. "So long as they can be repaired, they'll always be relevant to the cause."

-x-

Asuka wrote down a list of the monsters Shinji had faced that he wrote in his diaries over the years before the end of the last century, and found that he had faced a total of twenty-five different creatures in his days of using the Eva to protect the people. She found the names of monsters like Mothra, Kumonga, Baragon, Varan, Rodan, Kamacuras, a second Godzilla, and a three-headed beast called King Ghidorah among others. Yet, despite each conflict with each monster, despite the toll that it must've took on him over the years, Shinji rarely, if ever, killed any of these creatures. The only ones he ever found himself having to kill were the Kumonga and Kamacuras, as they demonstrated a carnivorous nature.

"I guess that's what happens when you face a giant spider and preying mantis," she told herself.

"What are you doing, Asuka?" Hikari asked her, and she remembered that she was in school right now.

"Nothing," she told her.

"That looks like a diary there. Not many people keep them, anymore since they started using the Internet for their secrets."

When she saw Shinji's name on it, along with the years it had been used by him, Asuka immediately put it away in her satchel.

"Isn't that private?" She asked Asuka.

"How can it be private when he's no longer around?" Asuka responded.

"Even the dead have a right to have secrets, Asuka."

"He just left…and spent a lifetime trying to change the future from the past."

"Asuka…what are you talking about?"

-x-

Up on the roof of the school, Toji and Kensuke sat on the ground with a solemn expression on their faces. The jock in black had told his best friend that a woman from NERV had come to see him to ask him to pilot a new Evangelion, and the otaku had wanted to know why he himself wasn't asked to do so, willing to do it.

"What did you tell her?" Kensuke asked him.

"I have until tomorrow to give my answer," Toji explained. "I'm not sure if I want to do it."

"Because of what happened to Shinji?"

"Yeah."

-x-

"…What do you mean, there's a problem?" Gendo questioned, over the phone, in his office, hearing that a situation occurred during the repairing of Unit-01.

"Sir, we were swapping out the armor on the torso area when we discovered that the Eva's core was gone," the woman on the other end of the line explained to him.

He hung up and leaned back in his seat. The core of the Eva was the primary component in making it operate, created from the initial experiment his wife conducted back in Two-Thousand-Four. Without it, the Eva couldn't generate an AT-Field, couldn't sync with the pilot it was assigned to, or even move an inch, for that matter. It was nothing more than a giant doll or action figure.

But how could people from the past have anything to do with the Eva's core removal? The technology available to them would've been insufficient to pierce its armor, even with the weapons of that time. There was no way anyone from the Nineteen-Fifties or beyond it could remove it…unless…

 _The Third Child,_ he suspected. _He must've had something to do with it!_

Until it could be proven, Gendo believed that his son had the people of the past remove the Eva's core to ensure that it could never be used again. He believed…and blamed him for not considering that NERV would need it again.

 _Damn him,_ he sighed.

-x-

Misato looked through the box of Shinji's memoirs and found a sealed envelope that was addressed to his father…but was suggested that it be opened by Misato.

 _What is this?_ She wondered, deciding to go ahead and open the letter.

" _To those whom this concerns,"_ the letter started, _"and to Gendo Ikari, if he's even bothering to read this. When my first child, my daughter, Izumi, was born, I felt the pride there was in being a parent. I loved her dearly, and wanted only for her to have a good life. It was shortly after my last sortie against a dangerous creature dubbed Ebirah, which looked like a giant lobster on steroids, that she was put in my arms. But I still couldn't put to bed the fear that the cold future I was trying to prevent from happening would happen, despite my efforts to improve the nation. My greatest fear is that my father would find a way to use my family to pilot Unit-01, something I don't want for them. So, with a heavy heart of conscience, I went to the Japanese government and made them remove the necessary pieces of the Eva to ensure that it couldn't be used, anymore. While the arms and legs could be replaced, whatever it is that I heard was referred to as the core was not as replaceable, so that was removed and disposed of to ensure my family's protection from the Eva. My father may be infuriated by my choice, but I have to put my family before anything else in my life, and that includes NERV. I don't regret this decision I've made for my family. In my heart, I know it was the right choice. It's my hope that things will get smoother in the years to come."_

Misato was shocked by this. She suspected that Shinji would try to change the future, but took a big precaution to ensure his family would be safe from the Eva by having its core removed. He knew enough about the Eva to know that it couldn't function without an intact core. Even when pitted against the tide of the oncoming future, he had some foresight to keep a powerful construct like the Eva out of hands of those who would use it for foul purposes, even if it was NERV itself.

As she read the letter further, Misato found that Shinji had a personal hand in the core's disposal, but didn't reveal where or when he had it disposed. She deduced that Shinji wasn't foolish to reveal where he had it disposed.

"I better get this to NERV right now," she said, and grabbed her coat and car keys.

-x-

Deep beneath the oceans of what used to be the South Pole, a large creature swam through the lifeless waters after awakening from a slow consumption of energy generated from a thermal vent. Something somewhere had disrupted the delicate balance of nature not too long ago, and the balance needed to be restored…by any means necessary. As night and day were eternal and had to oppose one another, order and balance needed to oppose disorder and imbalance to ensure stability in the Earth.

"Grr," it growled as traveled deeper into the abyss.

To be continued…

A/N: I'm wondering if the next chapter should be set in the past rather than the present. What do you think of Asuka's behavior towards Shinji's absence and change to history by facing monsters and having a family of his own? I know Gendo's pissed off.


	6. Beyond Duty

Creation began on 08-27-15

Creation ended on 10-20-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Beyond Duty

Gendo was beyond furious with his dead son's choices now. The letter that Major Katsuragi brought over to him had proven that the Third Child had rendered the recovered Unit-01 virtually useless without its core. And this had been done in order to protect his family from NERV and him.

 _Damn you for your single-mindedness, Third Child,_ he thought over the subject, trying to find a way to salvage the Eva's usefulness to NERV. _You took her away from me, never knowing of her true value._

-x-

"…So, he had the core removed in order to protect his family?" Ritsuko asked Misato, who informed her of why Unit-01 was deprived of its core. "I didn't think he'd go that far."

"He just didn't want them involved with NERV or any agency that uses Evas or fights Angels," the purple-haired woman explained to the faux-blond. "He didn't want to risk his descendants being drafted into service like he had been. If he couldn't prevent the future from repeating itself, he could at least prevent his children and their children from being exploited."

"Yet his decision may have made our own problems with the Angels difficult. Even if it's repaired, without a core, Unit-01 is useless."

"But we have Unit-03 now."

"Yet, we may not have a pilot for it."

-x-

"…Oh, my Gott," went Asuka, looking through Shinji's memoirs, and finding a tape that was dated during the early years after Second Impact. "I think I found his last video diary."

Hikari, having been invited over Misato's by Asuka, looked at the tape and found its title concerning some sort of regret. It read, _"My Failure"_ , as if to represent shame and defeat.

"Why would he label his last video diary _My Failure_?" She wondered.

Asuka picked it up and popped it into the VCR.

 _What was his failure?_ She thought as the television screen flickered to correct the resolution, showing an extremely-elderly man that resembled Shinji, but with wrinkles and grayish-white hair, dressed in purple pajamas.

"This is my final video entry," he said in front of the camera. "Last week was a disgrace to all the years I spent trying to prevent all the hurt that occurred because of Second Impact, and a disgrace to my soul that longed for an absolution that was long overdue."

The girls noticed that the older Shinji's left eye seemed paler than his right eye, indicating that he had gone blind in that eye.

"It was a hot afternoon, and I saw her," he went on. "I saw Yui Ikari. I saw my mother…and my childhood self. I didn't think I was so tiny as a toddler. I approached them, gathering my thoughts together, wanting desperately to save my past self from a future of hurt. I couldn't tell her my name, not even to convince her of who I was. I merely told her that she needed to stay with her son, that she couldn't or shouldn't leave him for any reason. I had hoped to be able to prevent her from leaving him alone with her husband, who would abandon him soon after…but I failed. She laughed at me. I tried to stop her from making the wrong choice that crippled me with emotional pain…and she laughed at me like I was crazy or delusional."

Asuka could sympathize with him for being disbelieved by someone.

"I tried warning her that her work would condemn her son, but even that didn't persuade her to turn away from what she was going to do later on." Shinji's voice became heavier with shame and regret as he spoke in front of the camera. "She took her son and walked away. I knew that in due time, she would leave my past self, and then his father would abandon him. Sometimes, I wonder why I bother trying to change history if nothing truly changes. Second Impact still occurred, Tokyo was destroyed, along with many coastal areas, and the planet was thrown off its axis. I failed to change anything. My granddaughter, Mima, tried to talk to me about what happened…but I told her that there was nothing to talk about. I'm starting to regret telling her so. Maybe it's just my need to rant in front of the camera because of my advancing age, or just the after-effects of being informed by my doctor that my left eye's going blind, but I should tell her what happened that day. If she ever has children of her own one day, I pray that child abandonment and child exploitation doesn't run in the family. There's been too much cruelty and heartache going on. Too many families torn apart, friends lost, homes reduced to unfamiliar settings to those that still have their whole lives to explore. And Hokkaido…it's still among the safest places in the country. Among the only places the Angels would ignore for some reason. It's a nice place to live, to really live. It's quiet, among the other benefits of having a home here. In the end, I can only imagine a future free of the violence between the Evangelions and the Angels, but without some other, hidden agenda that I know nothing about. I can't protect my family, anymore, and it hurts me to fear what can happen to them. But so long as NERV stays away from my loved ones, I can lay down some of my emotional weight. Whatever happens later on, I hope my younger self will be able to do what I couldn't achieve…or maybe my eldest granddaughter can inspire those around her to avoid the mistakes made by my parents. Either way, nobody should have to live in a world where people with darker goals will do anything and everything to see their desires come to fruition. Until then, beyond all that I've ever done, beyond all that I've ever seen, beyond even a sense of duty, flowers wither and lose their color, much as I now reflect in vain…time lost to the long rain. May the deities forgive me for my failure…and have mercy upon my soul…and permit for my grandchildren and their children a happy future."

Asuka raised her right hand to the television screen, as if to try and reach out to the elder Shinji, understanding why he viewed his attempts to change things as a failure because he couldn't change anything. If it had been her in his place, she would've probably done the same thing over the next years of her life if she had been stuck in the past, trying to keep history from repeating its darkest events. Maybe if she had greater success than Shinji, her mother might've been alive.

The tape then stopped, and the last recorded image was of a tear escaping Shinji's blind eye.

"He wanted so much to keep people safe by preventing the future's darkest tragedies," went Hikari, "and he couldn't do anything to save the ones he knew nothing about. No wonder he called the tape what he did."

"He didn't fail," uttered Asuka.

"What do you mean?"

"He says he failed in trying to change the world, but that's not true. He didn't fail to change anything. We failed him. NERV, his parents… We failed him."

-x-

"…Okay, Rei," the First Child heard Maya Ibuki say to her through the intercom system inside Unit-00. "The test is over."

"Yes, ma'am," Rei responded to the woman, and her synchronization with the Eva ceased.

"How much data did you collect from the test?" Gendo questioned Ibuki and Ritsuko Akagi in the room in front of the blue Eva.

"Plenty," Ritsuko explained to him.

"Good. Take care of things."

And by "take care of things", he meant the completion of the Dummy System. Ever since the revelation of Shinji having Unit-01's core removed and disposed of, Gendo wanted the remaining Evas updated with the Dummy System as soon as possible.

"I heard that Shinji has a family over in Hokkaido," Maya said to Ritsuko. "Is that true?"

"Yeah, it's true," the faux-blond answered her.

"It's hard to imagine him with a family of his own. I mean, I just never pictured him connecting with a woman from the past…and yet, he did."

"And we have the Twelfth Angel to thank for that. He might've found somebody to share his life with in the past, but we did lose a pilot for the Evangelion, and we're short an Eva because he deliberately had its core removed."

Suddenly, Ritsuko found herself thinking of Shinji and his comparison of her to Kyohei Yamane for her devotion to science and studying other organisms. It was also due to Shinji having, supposedly, developed an extremely low opinion of scientists in the past because of his victory over this Gojira or Godzilla creature that had been attacking Tokyo in the middle of the Nineteen-Fifties. It wasn't really her fault that she was a woman of science; she just put her work before anything else.

 _I wouldn't expect someone like Shinji to understand,_ she thought. _As a scientist, it's my job to study whatever needs to be studied, for better or for worse._

-x-

As she washed the LCL off her skin, Rei felt an empty space in her heart that had been where Shinji used to reside. It was like she had lost someone really important to her, and it just left an uneasiness she couldn't get over. Not only that, but Commander Ikari's complete indifference to the fact that he lost his only son to the war against the Angels and to these other misfortunes that had robbed Shinji of his life.

" _You're not going to see this relative of Shinji's?"_ She had asked him in his office.

" _Fuyutsuki and Katsuragi are handling this matter,"_ he informed her. _"There's no need for me to do so."_

But honestly, Rei have to suspect that this was only because Commander Ikari didn't want anything to do with Shinji, including seeing his descendants.

-x-

Misato sighed as she dialed the contact number for Mima Ikari and hoped that she could explain a little more about the type of person her grandfather was before he died.

"Hello, this is our house," the voice of Aki Ikari spoke up. "This is Aki Ikari. Who is this?"

"Hello, this is Misato Katsuragi. Is Mima Ikari there?"

"One moment, please," Aki responded, and a moment of silence was in motion for the purple-haired woman.

"Hello?" She heard Mima ask over the phone.

"Hello, this is Misato Katsuragi speaking."

"Miss Katsuragi."

"I was wondering if you could tell me more about Shinji that may have not been included in his memoirs that you gave me."

"What could I possibly say about him that may not be in his memoirs?"

"Anything you know about him would be nice."

"He and my brother didn't exactly get along well."

"Your brother?"

"Kenji Ikari. He wanted to be a scientist, but that just made Shinji sad."

"I think I can understand why."

"It wasn't until a week before he passed away that Kenji understood why our grandfather had such a low opinion of scientists. It was because his own parents were scientists, and that made his own understanding of them difficult, including others that devoted themselves to science. It's not easy to relate to those of science and find stability with them. It was a miracle that the two were able to make up before Shinji died, and Kenji, while still a scientist, is one that wants to help people without detaching himself from them."

"And what kind of scientist is this Kenji?"

"Alternate energy sources."

"That's helpful."

"What else was there about Shinji that you knew?"

"He loved music. Good music, bad music, trailer music. Eh-heh-heh. I once got him an iPhone so he could enjoy the benefits of having his music while being able to stay in touch with people."

Misato then took the phone and went into Shinji's room, finding his SDAT player laying on his bed, gathering a layer of dust.

"He was glued to music," she expressed to Mima.

"Among his list of favorite songs were _Enough_ from Disturbed, _Points of Authority_ and _From the Inside_ from Linkin Park, _Catch the Falling Sky_ and _The Mother of All Battles_ from Immediate Music, _There for You_ by Flyleaf, and _My Immortal_ by Evanescence, just to name a few. I never understood his admiration towards music, but then again, nobody's really supposed to understand one's admiration towards music or art."

As Misato and Mima continued to converse about Shinji, Asuka, still looking through some of Shinji's old diaries and learning of his youngest son with his wife, Mariko, whom he named Shinsetsu, who was born late in the night during a cold winter. She read how Shinji cried happily as he held his winter-seasoned son, recalling how he had held his first son during the fall season.

" _I couldn't stop crying when I saw Shinsetsu for the first time,"_ she read in the pages. _"As I looked outside the window at the falling snow, something that was a blessing for many, not just myself, I hoped that Shinsetsu would come to love the seasons as much as I did. Though, not the summer season, as I couldn't embrace such a season that, in the unwritten future I wish would be rewritten, was constant and an eyesore to one's mind. Mariko has come to understand my adoration of the other three seasons that I loved with all my heart. They were the elements that repeated with every year that came and went. Winter was the season of the water element, just as spring was the season of the element of the Earth herself. Summer, with the least amount of acceptance, was the season of the fire element, burning all in its path, and autumn, when everything prepares to repeat again, to allow for all things to recuperate and begin after winter, was the season of the air element, opposite of the spring season. Death and rebirth. I promised Mariko that if we have another child, we'd name it for the summer season, since we had agreed upon season-themed names for our kids. We already have our eldest daughter, Izumi, for our spring season-themed child, and our eldest son, Akikaze, for our autumn-themed child, leaving only summer left. Rikka for a girl and Shoka for a boy. Mariko is hoping for another girl, being as we now have two sons. We've been through three births, and her mood swings remind me of Asuka whenever she hits me, but it would be cruel of me to compare my wife and best friend to a girl I barely knew in the future. I mean, I've told her everything I knew about Asuka from my point of view, and she asked me once if I had any romantic feelings for her. Of course, I told her that I didn't, and even if there had been a possibility that I might've fallen for her, it's just a fantasy that can't be made into a reality because I'm married to Mariko, my one, true love, and my relationship with her is enough for me."_

Asuka found Shinji's family life to be the only remedy he ever had in his life that had conflicts he had to resolve. She found herself, despite wanting to hate him, just for being who he was when they met, admiring his life in the past…and envying him for said life. He had found a life beyond that of the Eva, and wasn't ruled by it. More than that, he wanted to preserve such a life for his family at all costs, even when it meant wasting his own years to throw away potential obstacles that could've presented themselves to him or the world.

"…And he loved the other three seasons more than summer, which he began to view with less enjoyment," Mima told Misato.

"With over ten years of summer in this country, anyone would enjoy the feel of a different season, whether it's winter or spring," Misato agreed with her about the satisfaction of a season different from that of summer. "Did he have a favorite among the other three seasons?"

"Winter," Mima revealed to her. "Winter was black and white, night and day, and snow covers everything it touches."

Misato remembered such a time when there was snow…and wouldn't have minded to be surrounded by snow again.

BEEP! A sound came over the line.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I have a call waiting," Mima explained. "Could I call you back?"

"Of course. Goodbye."

-x-

"…What do you mean, there was an incident with Unit-04?" Gendo demanded over the phone with a representative of the NERV branch in Nevada.

"We were in the process of completing the installation of the S² Engine when we were attacked by something," the representative explained. "It was…some sort of animal. A massive one. It smashed right through the facility and damaged the Eva, devouring the S² Engine before taking off into the air. Unit-04 has been compromised."

Gendo then hung up and Fuyutsuki, who was present in the office with the man, uttered, "What kind of creature attacks a NERV facility and damages an Eva for its S² Engine?"

All this discovery did was infuriate Gendo even further, like everything in the world right now was working against him.

-x-

"…So, I hear that the initial candidate for Unit-03 declined to become a pilot," went Misato to Ritsuko the next day in Central Dogma.

"His reason for turning us down was because of the Third Child's departure, that he didn't want to risk spending the rest of his life committed to the Eva."

"Well, in a way, Shinji had been committed to the Eva for years. Decades."

"Against giant animals, not Angels."

"It doesn't matter what he used the Eva to go up against. It matters that he went up against threats against the world, and it took much of his life."

-x-

High in the air, having consumed the remains of the S² Engine, the creature that attacked the NERV base in Nevada was heading towards its newest destination. From a distance, the creature resembled some sort of insect crossed with a pterodactyl, with at least three pairs of limbs for attacking and defending. The wings were likely an additional pair that had developed for powered flight. Its eyes were like red slits, enabling it to perceive the world without much harm to its head.

In many ways, this creature was bolstered by the arrogance of those beneath it. They gave it the power to fight, to conquer, to devour without an end to its ravenous appetite.

-x-

"…So nowhere in his memoirs did the Third Child say where he disposed of Unit-01's core?" Gendo asked Misato in his office.

"No, sir," she answered. "They were checked many times, and nowhere is it mentioned where he had the core disposed, only that he had it disposed of. If he knew where he disposed of the core, he didn't want anyone else to know about it. He took the secret to the grave with him."

"What about his granddaughter? Is there a chance that he confided in her the whereabouts of the missing core?"

"It's unlikely that Shinji ever told anyone, including his children and grandchildren, the location of the core. He didn't want them involved in NERV-related affairs."

Gendo then decided to do something that went against what the late Third Child had tried to prevent from happening.

"Contact this Mima Ikari," he ordered.

-x-

Asuka chuckled as she read a medical piece in another of his diaries. In it, Shinji had written that an eye doctor had told him that his eyesight was degrading to the point where he would need glasses. The young man had thrown a fit against the doctor for suggesting glasses where there were other options to something he declared was not necessary. She suspected the reason he didn't want to wear glasses was because of his father, wanting not to be anything like him at all, including requiring corrective lens.

 _Stupid Shinji,_ she thought, trying to imagine him wearing glasses, but always seeing him resemble his father a little as a consequence. _There's no way you could ever look nice in glasses._

She read on and found that he took the alternate route using contact lenses until he was able to get an operation that corrected his vision, keeping glasses away.

"… _Mariko knew I hated glasses because of my father, so she never suggested I try wearing them, even if it was to correct my vision. I promised myself I wouldn't become anything like him. Scientists, politicians, people that don't make time for family or friends, those are the people I refuse to be anything like. I have no aspirations to be a brainiac or a person that wants a position of power somewhere. I'll never understand what it is that makes people want to be remembered for their skills or wealth instead of just being a good person. What's wrong with just being a friendly doctor or a lawyer for the people? Why does everyone want to be well-known for some other reason that can be misunderstood or misinterpreted?"_

And Asuka remembered what she had told Shinji, about her own reason for piloting the Eva, so people would notice her. Now she wished she had a different reason for piloting the Eva like he did. Had. The whole past tense thing could drive a person crazy when it involved time travel or just getting stuck somewhere in a time where danger was nonexistent or wasn't understood.

 _His initial reason, the reason he had given me, was because he wanted to hear kind words from his father,_ she thought. _And then, he started piloting the Eva to protect the people from giant monsters that weren't Angels. He didn't do it to be remembered, or to be noticed, or for glory or anything. He just wanted to protect the people so that they could have a future._

-x-

"…What are you thinking, Ikari?" Fuyutsuki asked Gendo, wanting to know why he had order Katsuragi to contact his great-granddaughter, his son's granddaughter.

"She might know the location of Unit-01's core," Gendo expressed. "The Third Child must've confided in her its whereabouts."

"Ikari, if he had the core removed and disposed of, it was to keep her and other members of his family away from NERV and agencies like NERV. He didn't want them to be bound to the Eva like he had been. There's no way he would tell her or any of them what he had done to the core."

"We don't know for sure."

"Suppose we did? Suppose she told you the truth, that she doesn't know what her grandfather did with it, would you stop doing what comes to outright harassment? What comes to interfering with someone's life?"

"To defeat the Angels, I will do what is necessary," Gendo told him.

It was apparent to Fuyutsuki, even when this had been a choice that Shinji made to protect his loved ones, they weren't safe from Gendo if he decided to mess with them if it meant making Unit-01 functional again.

-x-

After helping to put her baby brother to sleep, Aki left out the bedroom and into the kitchen to do her homework.

"…I don't know what you're talking about, Ms. Katsuragi," she heard her mother say over the phone. "I would speak with Grandfather a lot, but whatever secrets he kept, even from me, he had every right to keep them. I didn't pry into anything personal about him. Well, you can inform your superior that there's nothing to say, nothing to reveal, because there's nothing I can say that I know nothing about."

As she hung up, Mima looked at her daughter and gave her a small smile.

Aki ran over to her and hugged her right leg.

-x-

"…She said she knew nothing about the core's whereabouts," Misato informed Gendo and Fuyutsuki.

"You should've pressed her harder," Gendo responded.

"Her grandfather never told her anything about the Eva, only where he had it buried in the hopes that it would never be used again. Anything else he knew before he died, he took to the grave with him so that nobody else would suffer. She doesn't know anything else."

"We don't know that," Gendo enforced.

Misato began to worry about Mima and her children after Gendo said that. It was like he was planning to draft his son's descendants into NERV's affairs with the Angels, whether they knew anything about the Eva's missing core or didn't.

-x-

Ritsuko had considered burning the diary of Shinji's that she had borrowed from his box of memoirs and saying there was an accident that happened in her office, but had decided against it. It wasn't because of the boy's small handwriting or anything, but rather his dislike of scientists that had her on edge about him when he died and was reduced to explaining things post-mortem.

As she was bringing up the final results of the Dummy Plug prototype, she decided to read where she had left off in his diary about something he had recently discovered.

" _It was shortly after I was sought out for piloting the Eva again after a decade of peace with the Ikari Clan,"_ he had written, _"but these people were really desperate and wouldn't have come after me if they didn't have any other alternatives that they were comfortable with. They explained to me about finding a second Godzilla wandering around, the organization that they worked for called Monarch, a multinational coalition formed in secrecy after the Nineteen-Forties, and how, prior to my encounter with a Godzilla creature, they had discovered the existence of creatures from an age where there was more radiation around than there was today, and how these creatures were able to live off it. And the nuclear tests that were done prior to the end of the war were just attempts to kill a creature that they believed was the Godzilla I had killed. They wanted me to pilot the Eva again, to act as a precaution against these creatures they called M.U.T.O.s that might've endangered the people and the cities."_

 _So, he'd been drafted into another agency,_ thought Ritsuko, wondering what this Monarch group specialized in when they were around. _They might've been the scientists studying whatever creatures he was fortunate enough to save for them._

As she read on, Shinji had written in the journal that Monarch was split between the two sides that made it up, the part that did all the scientific research…and the side that performed the muscle work if these M.U.T.O.s became difficult to deal with. Apparently, the side that fought against these Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms with whatever they had available for combat situations, including the use of the time-displaced Evangelion, was the side Shinji was affiliated with. The Eva had proven to be the organization's most invaluable resource, and with Shinji being the only one capable of using it, his presence was just as invaluable, since he prevented major losses, in lives and resources. But what caught Ritsuko's fascination so far with Shinji's involvement with the agency was that, despite the potential he had for being known to the world for his contribution (which was really NERV's contribution, if you thought of it from a different perspective), the boy preferred to be a nonentity, a nobody without so much as a claim to anything.

"… _My position in the agency has been invaluable,"_ she read, _"and my service has been appreciated with unfathomable respect for the way I choose to be conservative in energy and cautious when facing the M.U.T.O.s in civilian areas, wanting to be precise and keep as many people safe as possible. At the end of the day, nothing makes me feel more comfortable with my affiliation with Monarch than contacting Mariko to let her know that I'll be returning home, to let her know that I'm still alive and that we get to stay together."_

-x-

Ding-Dong! The doorbell of Mima's apartment rang, and the woman looked through the peephole to see who was there.

It was a young man, with short, ebony hair with bits of gray, wearing a worn-out, blue coat over a button-up shirt.

Mima opened the door and greeted the man.

"Kenji," she greeted.

"Mima," the man responded kindly. "It's been almost eight months since we last spoke."

"And normally, I wouldn't have called to disturb you unless I felt I had to."

"Please, it's not really disturbing when it involves a family matter. What is your trouble?"

"N-E-R-V."

"Grandfather's father?"

"He had one of his subordinates, the woman that had once been Grandfather's guardian, call me to ask if I knew anything specific about that purple giant he used to face giant monsters with back when he was alive. Of course, I told her that I knew nothing of it, but now I'm worried about my children. We all grew up knowing that his father isn't an understanding person, and how Grandfather took steps to ensure that we wouldn't get involved with that organization… But now it seems that man will try to involve my children into this unnecessary series of conflicts."

Kenji sighed and took his sister seriously; even before their grandfather passed away, he had researched what he could about this Gendo Ikari, formerly known as Gendo Rokubungi, and found him to be an extremely difficult individual…with a vengeance streak that he would take out on anyone he felt was either an obstacle or a distraction, and this included his children, which consisted of only their grandfather, who was both dead from old age and MIA as a youth.

"If this guy's as obsessive as he is cruel, then you were right to call me," Kenji told Mima. "I didn't feel all that great after Grandfather died, but I still care about my family. Whatever is necessary to keep you all safe from Gendo."

-x-

"…He had some affiliation with this multinational agency called Monarch," Ritsuko revealed to Gendo in his office. "They used him and Unit-01 to face these M.U.T.O.s that were around before the end of the Nineteen-Eighties."

"Monarch?" Fuyutsuki expressed. "I thought that organization was disbanded after Second Impact, that it was becoming unnecessary to continuing funding it."

"Does the Third Child's journal say anything else about this Monarch?" Gendo asked.

"Mainly that they approached him after encountering a second Godzilla creature related to the one he had killed when he arrived in Nineteen-Fifty-Four. He wrote down that they were desperate enough to come find him after a decade of disservice."

"And these…M.U.T.O.s?"

"Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms. As he discovered during his time in the past, they've been around since the time before the dinosaurs, and that they had a requirement for radioactive substances."

"So, when he wasn't trying to find people related to each of us in the past, he was facing radioactive creatures that were yet to be identified?" Fuyutsuki questioned.

"One such creature he wrote of that he claimed to have heard from someone else from his time-displaced past was called a Shinomura. A literal swarm of death. It used to be under the placeholder of M.U.T.O. until it was given its individual designation."

RING-RING! The phone in Gendo's desk rang, and he picked up.

"Yes?" He asked. "Very well, then."

"Another Angel?" Fuyutsuki asked him.

"Unknown, only that the JSSDF reported seeing something that is heading towards Tokyo-3."

-x-

Now away from the harmful waters of the former tundra wastelands, the planet's surviving guardian from before mankind's first breath of life, immersed in warmer waters, swam towards the cluster of islands that had a history of being attacked or even visited by its lesser members and other creatures from an age beyond this one.

-x-

Sitting in the plug of Unit-02, Asuka wondered what this non-Angel threat was that was approaching the city. If it was like any of the creatures Shinji faced in the past, or if this was a new type of beast.

The city population had been evacuated to the shelters.

"Its ETA should be in five minutes," she heard Misato over the intercom. "We're still unable to come up with a strategy on how to deal with it. Approach it with caution."

"Understood," Asuka responded.

"Yes, Major," added Rei.

As the two Evas were being loaded onto the catapults, the redhead couldn't help but look at the irreparable Unit-01, almost fooling herself into thinking that Shinji was still alive, waiting for his orders from Misato.

Unknown to her, Rei was thinking the same thing.

The Evas were launched into the city limits and awaiting the arrival of the non-Angel target. The sky was cloudy, so it would be considered a shock if and when they got their first look at the new enemy when it arrived.

"Target inbound in five seconds," the pilots heard over intercom.

The clouds shifted over one of the skyscrapers, revealing the target to the Evas as it landed on top of it.

"That's the target?" Asuka questioned, never seeing a creature like this before, almost making her think that it was some new type of Angel.

"That's the target," she heard Misato respond to her.

It looked like some sort of mosquito without its proboscis and replaced with a predatory head, made bigger and thicker in its limbs and body, and with red slits for eyes.

"Gaaaaaaaurgh!" It shrieked, spreading its wings in intimidation.

It had to be almost one-hundred meters in height, but the Evas out-sized it by being one-hundred meters in height.

Unit-02, raising its Pallet Rifle, opened fire upon the creature.

"Urraugh!" The creature shrieked, taking to the air and flying over the two humanoids. "Gurgh!"

The pallet rounds had little effect on the creature, leaving minor indents on its exoskeleton hide.

Suddenly, the Evas saw that its right, front limb started to glow bright right.

"It's about to do something," Asuka warned.

It flew to the ground and slammed its limb onto it, creating a shockwave of energy that spread out on all sides of where it struck.

When the shockwave hit Units-00 and 02, they stopped right in their tracks. The building lights turned off, the streetlights shut down, and all systems in the Geo-Front were disabled.

-x-

"What the Hell was that?" Maya and Hyuga asked, checking their consoles and monitors after they shut down.

"All systems are down," Shigeru revealed.

"We've lost all contact with the Evas," another technician added.

"The MAGI have no power, either," added another technician.

"All power to the base has been cut off," another technician revealed.

"Looks like we were hit with an EMP," went Fuyutsuki.

"An electromagnetic pulse?" Gendo demanded to know from him.

"Yes. It disables everything electrical within its radius, possibly for miles in all directions."

This, of course, meant that the Evas had been affected by the EMP, as well, being dependent upon electrical energy. This left them at the mercy of the creature that appeared.

-x-

"Come on! Work! Move!" Asuka shouted, trying to get Unit-02 to move, but the red behemoth was incapable of any action.

Within Unit-00, Rei found herself with the same dilemma, but she understood less than the Second Child did. Nothing within the prototype Eva was functioning.

Outside the two Evas, the flying creature that had immobilized them took flight and rammed into both giants, knocking them down.

"Aah!" Both girls had gasped.

The creature then decided to attack the blue-colored Eva over the red one, and dug its left forelimb into its right arm.

-x-

"…How much longer?" Misato asked Ritsuko.

"Systems should be rebooting right about now," the faux-blond explained, and soon enough did Central Dogma's, along with the rest of the base, regain power, and the holographic displays showed that the creature was trying to dismember Unit-00.

"Oh, no," Maya gasped, turning away from the displays.

"What is that?!" Shigeru gasped, pointing to something that was in the background of the attacking creature and the fallen Evas.

-x-

A wispy stream of bluish fire appeared and struck the creature in the back, forcing it off the blue Eva and pushing it a good distance away.

"Grr! Gurgh! Grruahh!" The creature shrieked, spreading its wings out in intimidation.

Standing over a remarkable three-hundred-fifty feet in height, something that looked as though it belonged to an era of existence beyond the eras that mankind reigned over stared down at the winged creature. Its tall, dark and menacing appearance made it a sight to behold.

"Gaaaaaaaaaaaurgh!" It shrieked, and it seemed as though it could be heard from miles away.

To be continued…

A/N: Another chapter for those that like this story. I hope it gets some reviews. Peace.


	7. Arrogance

Creation began on 10-21-15

Creation ended on 11-02-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Arrogance

"Come on, Aki," went Mima to her daughter, having packed her backpack for their trip outside of the city. "We're about to go with Uncle Kenji."

But Aki, having been distracted by what was currently being aired on the television, wasn't listening to her mother. How could she? She was looking at something that shouldn't have even existed, but was right there on the screen.

"Aki? Come on, sweetie, we have to leave now," her mother repeated, coming over to her.

"Mommy, on the TV," she finally uttered out. "Giant dinosaur."

Mima looked at the television…and couldn't believe what was captured by someone's cell phone or tablet.

"Uh, um, Kenji?" She called for her brother, who was holding her infant son for her.

He stepped out of the back room that was Shinji's, and stood near his eldest sister, facing the television screen displaying the creature.

"Is that what we grew up hearing about when Grandpa Shinji was much younger?" Mima asked him, unsure if it was just a prank being played.

"I would think so, sis," he responded. "He has returned."

-x-

It was a day later when NERV was able to rescue their only two pilots; they couldn't risk trying to while the two, giant creatures were fighting. But when the one with wings flew off, the one that looked like a dinosaur followed it, leaving the city.

"The base is running, but the power's from the emergency generators," Misato informed Asuka, taking her and Rei back to Central Dogma to be debriefed. "That creature unleashed an EMP, and it's still crippling most of the machines and electrical systems in the city."

"You said that it was chased away by a larger animal that showed up and attacked it, right?" Asuka questioned her. "What was it?"

"We have no idea yet, but we're hoping that Shinji's diaries can tell us. He may have encountered a creature like that one before."

"But what if he didn't? What if it was a creature he never encountered in the past?"

"Then we're on our own on dealing with them."

Entering the command center of Central Dogma, which was dimmer than usual due to the EMP's effects still lingering, people were working on restoring the systems to the shelters that required electricity to open their doors to let the people out.

"It was absolutely huge," Shigeru expressed about the dinosaur-like creature that attacked the flying one. "It was…incredible."

"Tell me about it," added Maya. "It could've destroyed us if it wanted to. Instead, it went after that creature with wings."

When Hyuga got his share of systems running long enough to let the civilians get out of the shelters, he expressed, "This was worse than the day the Ninth Angel showed up. At least it didn't unleash an EMP."

"Cell phones still don't work," went Kaji, trying his cell phone, seeing if he could try calling someone from underground like he used to.

Up in his chair, Gendo suspected that this flying creature was the same one that attacked the Nevada branch and took the salvaged S² Engine that was being installed into Unit-04. But the nature of the other creature was beyond him right now. While it intrigued him to a degree, he decided to see if it were possible to include this giant dinosaur in his plans; if it could be controlled, it could make NERV a powerhouse against SEELE in the future.

"We need to track these creatures down," he declared.

-x-

After being debriefed, Asuka returned to Misato's apartment and resumed reading through Shinji's diaries; if there was a chance that he faced creatures like these before, then maybe he wrote down how to deal with them. She sat down at the table and resumed reading through the diary.

" _After meeting Daisuke Serizawa's elder brother, Ryuhou Serizawa, and his nephew, Ishiro, I found that the two siblings had differing views on how science could be used to benefit mankind,"_ one of the pages she had left off read. _"While Daisuke had developed something that was by accident, he refused to divulge on it, saying it was not for the faint of heart. Ryuhou taken up research on biology, hoping to help people overcome the side-effects of radioactive fallout, something he was willing to divulge upon. It turns out that radiation can cause cancerous tumors in people. Unfortunately, Daisuke's presence around Monarch is met with a lack of understanding from the other scientific minds around. I once called him out on this and demanded an explanation to what he had discovered in his own research. I may not have been a scientist or understood everything a scientific mind could or would, not that I even wanna brag about who my parents were, as they still don't exist yet as far as I know after fourteen years of living in the past. Anyway, I demanded that he explain to me what he had discovered…_ _and later wished I hadn't. As a courtesy, I promised that I wouldn't tell anyone what he had discovered, but it still haunts me to this day that if his research ever got into the wrong hands, or if NERV ever got possession of it, it would probably make the Evas seem unnecessary, but it would also be the cause of another arms race. Heh, worse than the nuclear bombs that were made and used in an attempt to kill Godzilla before I ever showed up with Unit-01. Probably just as disastrous as the N² explosives that will exist in the future. I didn't interact much with him after that day, but I can understand his fear of what he had discovered. Hopefully, he can find a beneficial way for his work to be a gift to mankind."_

She continued for three more pages, but Shinji never wrote down what it was that this Daisuke Serizawa had discovered that could've been more dangerous than everything else that had existed at the time or in the here and now. The only thing that stuck out to Asuka was what Shinji had written about nuclear bombs having been used in an attempt to kill Godzilla. If nuclear weapons had been used in an attempt to kill this creature, Shinji made it seem on paper that such actions at that time were insufficient.

 _Maybe they were back then,_ she thought, _but this is the future, and we have better technology to aid in dealing with a threat._

-x-

"…NERV is to stand aside and let the military officials handle the situation regarding these creatures," SEELE 01 revealed to Gendo in the next meeting between him and the council.

"How can we be certain that they can even handle this matter? They were unable to deal with the Angels when they returned." Gendo countered.

"These creatures aren't Angels, so it's not NERV's business," went SEELE 09 to him.

"The flying creature unleashed an EMP and affected everything around. We're still working on emergency generators."

"They will handle the matter, Ikari. They have a dozen or so people that have been studying creatures of this sort," SEELE 11 revealed. "From the Monarch agency."

"Monarch?" Gendo asked, recalling that name from what was written in the diary of his son that Dr. Akagi had.

"Yes, Monarch. They've been around far longer than NERV has, and will be assigned the duty of resolving this matter. NERV is not to interfere."

When the meeting ended, Gendo should've probably mentioned that the Third Child had some involvement with this Monarch agency in the past because of the time-displacement issue none of them could accurately explain. Maybe if he had, then NERV would also have a hand in dealing with the situation (and he could try to gain control of the large animal).

Returning to his office where Fuyutsuki and Akagi were present, he sat down at his desk.

"I take it the meeting didn't go well?" Fuyutsuki asked him.

"NERV is not to interfere with the military's operation to destroy the two creatures," he revealed.

"Except the military's arsenal was proven ineffective against the Angels," went Ritsuko. "What can they do against these creatures when the Evas were unable to deal with an EMP?"

"They have the assistance of this Monarch agency."

"Monarch?" Fuyutsuki questioned. "Do they not know that your son was affiliated with that agency in his time-displaced past?"

Gendo didn't say anything about that discovery, something to which Fuyutsuki suspected that he kept out of the meeting.

-x-

"…This diary Shinji wrote in says that he found out that the group he helped with facing giant monsters in the Eva had used nuclear bombs in an attempt to kill Godzilla," Asuka told Misato later when the purple-haired woman came home. "He didn't go into complete details on why they seemed unable to do so, but I get the feeling that the larger creature you saw is the one Shinji found out to be Godzilla, and that maybe nuclear or non-nuclear weaponry of the present should be used to get rid of it."

"But it'll be a month or two before we have any N² explosives available for use," she told the redhead, reminding her that NERV had disposed of all their existing ones in the last attack. _Ritsuko, the nerve you had to decide how that operation was to be carried out._

"Then what about nuclear weaponry? Surely, that's still in use, right?"

"NERV may have some access to some nuclear missiles, but we should know more about this Godzilla before going down that road."

-x-

"No, sir, Mima Ikari called in earlier and she and a man she introduced as her brother came in and explained that she needed to take some time off of work to deal with a family matter," a woman told Gendo over the phone. "Are you a relative of theirs?"

"No," he answered her; just because these people were related to the Third Child, that didn't mean he considered them related to him, as it was both hard to explain and unnecessary to think about for someone like him.

As he hung up, he wondered where the Third Child's eldest grandchild could've run off to. He was still convinced that she knew something about the missing Unit-01 core, and that she ran off to keep from being made to tell anyone with an interest in using the Eva where it was.

"Ikari," went Fuyutsuki to him, "we shouldn't waste our time on the woman just because there's a possibility, a possibility, that she may or may not know something related to NERV."

"Until she divulges, she's suspected of harboring NERV-related secrets," he expressed.

"Ikari, you're only crossing lines that aren't as easy to forgive for crossing. Even if she tells you something you want to hear, you won't be satisfied."

But Gendo ignored the elder's warnings. He was completely impervious to reason.

-x-

"…If nuclear weaponry was insufficient in getting rid of creatures that survived off of it," went Ritsuko to Misato and Asuka, having been informed of what was written in the diary that spoke of some of what had transpired in the past, "why use it again? It's been a scientific belief that has been proven a few times that whatever doesn't kill you just doesn't work against you."

"Weapons made in that era were still in experimental stages," Asuka expressed. "They were new, they were prototypes that nobody expected to work the way they did. We live in the present, and technology has improved."

"I'm more intrigued by whatever it that Shinji wrote about seeing but didn't include in his diary that was discovered by this Daisuke Serizawa because it was so dangerous."

"Whatever it was, even Shinji believed that it could've led to a new arms race that could've made even the Evas obsolete," said Misato, "and many people could've died as a consequence. Back then, even research and development on Unit-01 wasn't attempted, even though it was suggested and requested by scientists not affiliated with this Monarch agency that used it to face these M.U.T.O.s to either capture or dispose of. Not when they included wanting to mass-produce it for military use."

"That would've been a waste of time and money," Asuka stated, "and they had no guarantee of making any that would actually work, just like how there was no guarantee that Unit-00 would work when it was made. Or Unit-01 when you put Shinji into the plug."

"Also, another of his diaries revealed that the second Godzilla he fought, along with certain other members of these…Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms were in possession of accelerated regeneration that made them difficult to deal with. He wrote down that this was harder if they had this ability that worked with an enhanced degree of durability, making them similar to Angels. Almost indestructible. He had a hard time just trying to stab this King Ghidorah creature in the chest, let alone one of its heads." Ritsuko revealed.

"King Ghidorah has three heads," Asuka clarified, which made both adult women look at her like she had gone crazy. "Three heads, two tails, could shoot out electrical discharges from its mouths and could create a magnetic field whenever it was in a state of recuperation? It wasn't just some flying creature. And it didn't possess accelerated regeneration, just durability, which, when in tandem with its flight, made it hard to face since an Eva can't fly."

"We have to at least consider this as a potential means to deal with these creatures if they come back, Rits," Misato requested.

"We can give it a try, but if this doesn't do anything to kill them, we're in trouble if they do come back and we have no means to defend ourselves from them."

-x-

"Mima!" A woman that was younger than the mother greeted her as she, her children and Kenji arrived inside a large, metal room that had been decorated with small things to make it seem like a place you could actually live in. "I didn't expect to see you here!"

"Suki?" Mima, who was holding her son in her arms, responded to the odd presence of her and Kenji's cousin. "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, you mean, Kenji didn't tell you?" The woman expressed. "After you called him, he called me. Quite the reunion, huh?"

"And…this right here?" Mima pointed to the small bulge that was the young woman's belly.

"Oh, this? This is after eight months of trying and my husband and I getting our working priorities straightened out."

"You're eight months along?"

"Three months, actually. So…that man finally knows about us?"

"Mostly just me, because I had Grandpa Shinji's memoirs. It was mostly I that had more contact with him before he passed away."

Suki sighed heavily and then uttered, "He outlived my father by eight years…and I still miss them both."

"Is Rikka still okay?" Kenji asked her.

"My mom is still okay…if you can deal with the deteriorating condition she has that gets worse every year. I saw her last month to let her know that she was going to be a grandmother soon…and it took me a great effort not to feel hurt when she asked me who I was."

Mima and Kenji sympathized with their young cousin's loss, since it was their loss, too. Suki's mother suffered from Alzheimer's, and it was getting towards the stage where any more of her brain that could be deteriorated would, and then anything else could go as a result. Their aunt was the youngest of their grandfather's children, and she was the last of his children still alive.

"What are you hoping for?" Mima asked her.

"If I'm fortunate enough?" Suki responded. "I honestly hope for twins. A boy and a girl. Then, I could name the girl after my mother."

Suddenly, Shinji made a whine, and Mima realized that her son was making his hungry face.

"Just so that you know what you're getting into," she told her cousin as she sat down and began breastfeeding her son, "you'll sometimes wish for more sleep time when they're up and about."

"I'll consider myself informed," Suki told her.

-x-

"…It seems like out of all of Shinji's children, the only one left alive is his youngest daughter, Rikka Ikari," went Maya to Shigeru and Hyuga, going over the list of children the Third Child had and the reduced list that comprised only the ones that were still alive, which was only his youngest daughter.

"I think I read in one of his diaries that she's his child of summer," Hyuga stated.

"Could she have been his least favorite child?" Shigeru questioned.

"I think that would be cruel of Shinji to view one of his own children as his least favorite. I mean, just because his father never says anything kind to him, it doesn't mean that the choices of the father reflect upon the son that ended up stuck in the past and had a family of his own. He seemed incapable of favoring one of his children less than the rest, and he had four of them."

Maya agreed with Hyuga's belief on Shinji being unable to treat any of his children with less affection than the rest. And how the boy that died an old man in his seventies had taken steps to ensure that none of them would be involved with the Eva like he had; there was no way could or should believe that Shinji could commit such actions unless he truly loved them with every inch of his heart and soul. While it might've infuriated Commander Ikari, this had been a decision that couldn't be undone by any one of them, no matter what. There was probably no love greater than that of a concerned parent wanting only to protect their family.

"If Commander Ikari knew about his youngest granddaughter, he'd probably not be interested in meeting her," went Maya, "just like he wasn't interested in seeing his great-granddaughter when we found out about her."

Within Central Dogma, accessing the databases around the country with the barely-powered MAGI, the three technicians had discovered another detail about Shinji's surviving daughter that was depressing but not looked down upon much of the time in society.

"She got pregnant at age seventeen and had a daughter by the name of Suki Ikari," said Shigeru. "Her boyfriend at the time was a veterinarian intern from Osaka that had been in a plane crash that killed him. He didn't even know his girlfriend was having his baby."

"It looked like Shinji wasn't a believer of abortion being the same as murder, but he did declare that whether or not Rikka decided to have the baby was her choice…and one he would support her on. That would've made him pro-choice over pro-life." Hyuga added in this discovery that wasn't found in his memoirs so far. "Whoa, it says here that Shinji once had to assault a pair of protesters that were harassing Rikka when she was at her appointment in this clinic because she was falsely accused of being there to get an abortion."

"Was he arrested?" Maya asked him.

"He was let off with a warning, but if he got involved again, the police would give him either probation or a month in a detention center for assault."

"I wouldn't call Shinji a person that cared less for his summer-named child if he was willing to assault two people that accused her of getting an abortion when she wasn't."

As the three continued to talk about it, Asuka and Misato, who were in the same room as they were, had heard the entire conversation and couldn't believe what Shinji did for his youngest daughter when he was alive. However, that also meant that NERV might've tried to have a meeting with this Rikka Ikari if they could.

-x-

"So is Auntie Suki having a baby of her own soon?" Aki asked her mother as she was doing her homework in their assigned quarters.

"Well, that's what she's trying to do," Mima explained. "It's not all that easy to do."

"Why? You were able to have Shinji…and Daddy's not around."

"What I mean is that it's not easy because some people need to have stability in their lives before they can go down that road to starting a family of their own. Stability, a sense of organization and balance, allows for diversity and configuration between what to do and so on. Am I making any sense, sweetie?"

"I think so, Mommy."

On her daughter's left side of the small table where she was memorizing her words was a collapsible crib where Shinji slept, and the mother went over to sit down between them.

"Why does Grandpa Shinji's father dislike us so much?" Aki asked her.

Mima was unsure how to answer her daughter's question, but gave it a try in making it simple.

"Great-Grandfather is…difficult to get along with," she expressed. "He doesn't know how to get along with other people because he has never tried to engage in simple conversations. When you speak with your friends at school, you use kind words, right?"

"Yes, Mommy. I use 'please', 'thank you', 'you're nice' and other good words."

"Well, those are some of the words that he doesn't use when talking to people. They're words that he's…just unwilling to use towards anyone."

Aki then sat her pencil down and hugged her mother once more.

"That just means that he chooses not to, doesn't it?"

"Yes, I'm afraid so."

-x-

On the deck of an aircraft carrier that rivaled the one that transported Unit-02, Kenji and a little girl older than Aki was were watching through binoculars the large, jagged dorsal fins of the creature that was over one-hundred meters tall and was the heaviest animal on land and sea.

"He appears to be half a mile from us, Kenji," the girl, with waist-length ebony hair and hazelnut-colored eyes, told him. "Maybe less than half a mile."

"Even the hunter will move at a steady pace until they need to get to where they need to be." Kenji responded, still impressed with seeing this magnificent creature for himself in real life.

The girl was Hana Kyuusei, who, unknown to Kenji's sister and cousin, was associated to the young man. He just hadn't told them how and why.

"You think the world will find out about him sooner or later this time around?" Hana asked him.

"After what was shown on television in Tokyo-3, there's no way to keep quiet about this," he answered her. "If the people saw him and that M.U.T.O., then they know that he's very real."

-x-

It was just as some of the personnel of NERV had suspected of Gendo. He found out about Rikka Ikari being his son's youngest daughter and his only child left alive, and decided to pay her a visit. He just wasn't prepared for where she had been for the last few years; it turned out that his granddaughter had been living in a medical care facility specializing in mental health and deterioration.

The only place in most of Japan to avoid the calamities of Second Impact, and Gendo hated it because the Third Child had hidden his children there to keep them safe from the feud between mankind and the Angels. The Sapporo Medical Care Institute, and it almost made the man fearful of what was to be expected.

"Hello, can I help you?" A woman with brownish-gray hair asked Gendo as he entered the building and stood in front of the countertop.

"Yes, I'm here to see Rikka Ikari," he answered her.

"And your name?"

"Gendo Ikari."

The woman looked at him, curious about the last name relation, and questioned, "Are you a relative of hers, sir?"

"Unfortunately," he expressed.

He was then led by a security guard to the small room where Rikka was, and received a shock.

A woman in her late-fifties laying in a bed, looking at a photo album was all that occupied the room. She seemed completely oblivious to the world around her.

"This is her?" He asked the guard.

"Yes, sir," he answered back. "She's been here for ten years now. It takes a toll on that daughter of hers, who comes to see her every week. Last time she was here, she repeated to her that she was going to be a grandmother. About a year ago, she had another visitor. It was her father. I think his name was Shinji. He was always hurt when she couldn't remember his name."

This, of course, didn't affect Gendo in the slightest degree. He sat in front of the woman that, in a strange way, was his granddaughter.

"I find this hard to comprehend completely," he uttered. "You're the Third Child's daughter…and you're all but brain-dead. It doesn't make any sense to why they keep you medicated if it does nothing to help you. Perhaps, if you were younger, and had been born fifteen years ago, you'd be able to serve a purpose for NERV."

The woman then turned to look at him, tilting her head to the left.

"Excuse me, who are you?" Rikka asked him innocently.

-x-

"…Well, it looks like we're back to full power," went Ritsuko to the technicians tasked with getting the Geo-Front's power back on. "Good work, everyone."

Suddenly, the base's alarms went off, indicating that an Angel was present.

In Central Dogma, displayed on holographic monitors, the Angel was hovering towards the city from beyond the mountainous terrain. It resembled a large and deformed humanoid with what appeared to plates of bone on its shoulder areas and its core was located on its center.

"Great," went Misato, preparing to launch the Evas to deal with threat. "Not even a week has gone by, and we're slipping back into our schedule."

Within the repaired Evas, Asuka and Rei were launched into the city streets to intercept the Angel before it could reach NERV HQ. Asuka was armed with a Pellet Rifle while Rei was armed with a sniper rifle, as she was backup.

"Maybe this time will be different," said Asuka. _How were you able to handle facing giant monsters that weren't Angels, Shinji?_

As the Angel got closer to the city, the Second Child recalled a passage from the fifth diary of Shinji's that she read.

" _Ryuhou Serizawa once stated an ideal truth that should be taken serious if I ever see everyone in the future again. There is a sense of poetic justice in what he told me once. The eternal arrogance of mankind will always be to believe that nature is in our control_ _…_ _and never the other way around. I couldn't understand it for a while, but I was able to get my head around what made us all an arrogant bunch. We try to control what won't be controlled, to dominate what can't be dominated. While we think we can't be controlled or dominated, we can be in ways beyond our way of thinking_ _…_ _and by forces beyond our beliefs. It just reminds me of the Eva, in that it was created by people to face a force we don't truly understand, that we can't hope to overcome without messing with forces that we simply weren't meant to mess with, staining our souls with disgrace and sin. If I ever wanted to meet my father again, I'd tell him this myself. I'd tell him that mankind's eternal arrogance is thinking nature is under our control when it's really the other way around, and that it's a fact we can't escape from, no matter what we try."_ She recalled reading from his diary.

What frightened her to a small degree about this passage…was that she believed it to be true. It just made her think of what happened to cause Second Impact, the very calamity that he wanted to prevent. People tried to control the First Angel, and ended up killing half the human race, many innocent lives lost forever, along with many landmasses and animal and plant species. She wasn't even sure what possessed the people from fifteen years ago to try and experiment on Adam, or what it was that actually caused him to self-destruct.

The Angel set its malformed legs onto the ground in front of the red Eva, and its face's sunken eyes glowed brightly.

To be continued…

A/N: In case any of you were wondering which Angel this was that appeared, it was Zeruel, the Angel of Might. Do any of you wish to see another kaiju in the next chapter that we're familiar with? Mothra, perhaps?


	8. Needed once more

Creation began on 08-23-15

Creation ended on 11-12-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Needed once more

A/N: Set ten years after Nineteen-Fifty-Four.

The sunlight shone on his face, waking him up to the tweeting of the birds outside. Around him in the room were several books and various items he had gathered over the past five years after the devastation in Tokyo and its reconstruction program. By the time it was Nineteen-Fifty-Nine, Tokyo had been completely repaired of the damages caused by Godzilla. And not a day goes by that someone from Tokyo appears to thank Shinji Ikari for his killing Godzilla.

But not a day goes by that Shinji found himself weary of the praise. People would view him as a sort of hero when all he did was out of the concern for the safety of the people that were hurting out on the streets that night. He didn't see himself as a hero, just someone that wanted to stop the mayhem, and that the real heroes were the police, firefighters and regular Good Samaritans that night and every other day. He only did one thing, and some people found it hard to forget about it because of how much it affected them to the core of their being.

 _Has it really been only ten years?_ He wondered, rising from the futon and onto his feet. _Sometimes, it feels like it was only yesterday that I came here and found a life that seemed like a faraway dream._

"Good morning, Shinji," he was greeted by Juna Ikari as he stepped out of his room.

"Good morning, Juna," he responded. "Is…is Mariko awake?"

"Yeah, she woke up twenty minutes before you did. Miss her admiration of you?"

Although it was just a tease from her, Shinji couldn't help feel that Juna had within her an echo of Misato to act as her sense of humor. He'd been around her for ten years, and part of him started wondering if she had influenced, in some way, someone that would be related to Misato.

They both walked into the kitchen and saw Mariko with Botou, sitting at the kitchen table. The woman by the stove preparing breakfast was a woman of similar age to Juna, with shoulder-length hair and gray eyes. This was Mitsukai Ikari, Botou's wife, and one of the eight members of the Ikari Clan before Shinji joined them.

"We have a bit of a rice shortage today, everyone," she told them.

"Botou didn't get the rice yesterday like he was supposed to?" Juna asked her sister-in-law. "I told you that we should've had Shinji do it as a precaution in case Botou forgot to."

"I didn't forget," Botou defended his lack of progress on performing a simple task. "I just wasn't able to get to the market."

"He forgot," went Mariko, seeing through her cousin's excuse.

Botou looked at his wife, sister and Shinji, who looked at him with judgmental faces, and he saw no way out.

"Okay, I forgot," he confessed.

"He did admit that he was wrong," said Shinji to the women.

-x-

As the afternoon sunlight shone over the estate and the land around it, Botou, as requested by Mitsukai, was fixing the front porch's three steps. Since he forgot to restock on rice, he had to do Shinji and Juna's chore to fix the steps.

DING-DONG! He stopped hammering a nail on the bottom stop and turned to the front gate, seeing a pair of people by a car; they had pressed the bell to the gate.

He set the hammer down…and picked up his sheathed katana before going over to the gate.

"May I help you?" He asked them, seeing they were a man and woman in their forties and thirties, respectively.

"Is this the Ikari estate?" The man asked him.

"It is."

"And does Shinji Ikari live here?" The woman asked him.

"He does. Are you people that have heard of his service that night in Nineteen-Fifty-Four?"

"Yes…but we're not fans," the woman clarified.

"We have a problem that we need to speak with him about," the man added.

Botou then uttered, "Wait here."

He then ran back to the house and towards Shinji's room.

"Shinji," he called for the young man. "Some people are here to see you."

The door slid open and Shinji stepped out.

"They're not fans, are they?" He asked him.

"No. They say they have a situation that they need to speak with you about."

"Okay."

While Botou had gone back to let the two people in, everyone else in the house had gathered in the living room. Since this was something that seemed serious, they all needed to be around to support the person this was to affect.

"My apologies for disturbing you," the man expressed to them.

"The situation we're dealing with," the woman uttered, "while not extreme yet…we need your help to resolve."

"What is this situation you need his help with resolving, exactly?" Mariko asked them.

"You recall the Nineteen-Fifty-Four incident, right?" The man asked them.

"It's hard to forget," Juna stated. "Even though Tokyo has managed to recover from the devastation, some memories can't be forgotten, no matter how hard people try."

The woman, who had a suitcase with them, opened it and pulled out several photos.

"This is from before the Tokyo devastation that was ended because of you," the man explained. "In the earlier months of Nineteen-Fifty-Four, the first time a nuclear submarine ever reached the lower depths, it awakened something."

One of the pictures was of the USS Nautilus preparing to submerge in the water.

"The Americans first thought that it was the Russians," the woman added in, showing them pictures of damaged, naval ships. "The Russians thought that it was them. You heard of those nuclear bomb tests that were performed in the early Nineteen-Fifties?"

There was a picture of the mushroom cloud that was the result of the Castle Bravo bomb.

"They weren't tests," she declared.

"Not tests?" Botou questioned. "The media labeled them all as atomic testing. How could they not be not be tests?"

"To the rest of the world, they were labeled as atomic testing," the man explained, "but the truth behind them is that they were trying to kill it."

"It?" Shinji asked him, fearing that he knew the answer to his own question.

The man showed them a picture that was taken just before the Castle Bravo detonation.

"Him," he revealed.

The picture depicted a massive reptile, rising over hundreds of gallons of water, a fierce sight to behold on anyone that had no fear of the world. That's when Shinji realized something not right: The creature in the picture and the one he killed ten years ago, while similar, were vastly different from one another.

"This creature looks different from the one that attacked Tokyo," he told them. "Did it end up that way after the bomb went off?"

"No," the man explained. "He is an ancient, alpha predator, far older than the one you killed."

"How old?"

"Millions of years older than all of mankind," the woman revealed, "from an age where the planet was ten times more radioactive than it is today. This animal…and others just like it…consumed this radiation as a type of food source. But when the radiation levels on the surface began to naturally subside, these creatures adapted to live deeper in the oceans, further underground, absorbing radiation from the planet's core."

Shinji handed the picture of the creature to Mariko, who passed the picture of the mushroom cloud to Mitsukai.

"Wait a minute, you said "they" were trying to kill it," Mitsukai said. "Who's "they"?"

"The agency we work for," the woman said, taking out a card with her picture on it. "Monarch."

The woman, named Tsubaski Yuuki on her card, worked as an assistant scientist in the agency.

"A multinational coalition formed in the wake of the discovery. It was formed in secrecy, tasked with searching for him, studying him, learning whatever we could."

"Based on the legend of Odo Island, he is also called Godzilla," the man said.

"There were two Godzillas?" Mariko asked.

"Maybe more than two, but this one's unique."

"He exists at the top of primordial food chain," Tsubaski declared. "A god, for all intents and purposes in the ancient animal kingdom."

"And a monster," Shinji added. "But what has that to do with me?"

"Three years after you killed the Godzilla that attacked Tokyo, we ran tests on its remains and confirmed that it was much younger than we realized. It was likely less than a century old before the failed attempt to kill the alpha predator was made. Then, just a month ago…we received confirmation of another Godzilla creature encountered in Tokai."

"Why Tokai?" Mitsukai asked.

"It's a nuclear-feeding creature," went Botou. "So, it's obvious that it would go after the nuclear power plant that was recently built there."

Tsubaski showed them the picture of the new Godzilla that appeared…and the devastation it caused as it destroyed the power plant.

"You used something to kill the one that attacked Tokyo," the man said. "An armored giant."

"The Eva," Shinji recalled the last time he ever saw that behemoth before he moved in with the Ikari Clan. "It's been ten years since I last piloted it. I used it to kill the Tokyo Godzilla."

"You mean, you want him to get in that thing to face this one?" An elderly man in his early-fifties, asked them; this was Mariko's father, Hiro Ikari, and the patriarch of his side of the clan.

"We wouldn't be here to ask you unless we tried every other alternative," Tsubaski stated, making it clear that they didn't have any other alternatives that could be used to deal with this new Godzilla. "We'd appreciate it if you helped us deal with this matter."

-x-

After being told that Monarch suspected the new Godzilla wouldn't attack for nuclear substance for about a week, Shinji needed time to process everything he found out about. It wasn't every day that you found that a creature similar to the one you killed a decade ago had appeared and caused destruction…and would be back in due time to cause more destruction in its pursuit for nuclear energy to feed upon.

"Shinji?" He heard Mariko outside his room.

"Yes?" He responded, and the door slid open to reveal the young woman.

"You want to talk about it?" She asked him.

"For the longest time, I thought I could put it all behind me," he explained to her. "The Eva, not everyone else."

"It has been ten years, though."

"It's the one thing I really wanted to put behind me. I stopped concerning myself with it after I got here. Still…I can't get that night out of my head."

"You mean, that woman that had given up on trying to run away from Godzilla and had nearly sentenced herself and her children to death when you arrived?"

Shinji had confided in Mariko and Juna about that night, about how the woman had told her children that they would be with their father soon. Even how they became the motivation for him to save what was left of Tokyo, a place he had never seen before, a place he had never been around to see at all, from being reduced to a cemetery of charred remains. He used the Eva to protect the people from a threat that it was never intended to face…and saved them from a real threat that their existing weapons were useless against. It was also the very first time he ever felt any pride in saving the people and giving them their future.

"People still call you a hero for that," she told him.

"But I'm not a hero. I just… I just killed a creature that was hurting them. It's not something I'm too proud of…and it's not something I'd like to be remembered for."

"Well, what would you like to be remembered for?"

"A Good Samaritan. A teacher. Someone that just wants to do good…without hurting the people. There's nothing wrong with a life like that."

Mariko could see how much this affected him. She saw how he spent the last ten years trying to forget about this one aspect of his past, which was lived in the future she would unlikely see, that seemed to have a grip on him that was unlikely to relent on him. There was never a minute that she found herself wondering if he ever desired some sort of excitement that filled him up. And then, there was the revelation that he shared with her that his father, a rather disgraceful man and poor excuse for a parent, had only wanted Shinji around this Tokyo-3 place that existed in the future…just because he had a need for him. A need, a use, which was cruel, even for a parent.

She sat on the edge of his bed, near his feet, and looked at him with warm eyes.

"I mean, there isn't anything wrong with being remembered for a life like that, right? Mariko?" Shinji asked her.

"No," she answered him. "There's never anything wrong with being remembered for a life like that. And they only asked for your help. You weren't told you had to offer them your assistance or was forced by anyone. So, whatever choice you make regarding this matter, I'll stand by you. Just make sure it's what you want to do."

Shinji rose up and gave her a small smile.

"No shame in at least trying something, right?" He asked her.

"Never any shame in trying anything," she told him.

-x-

"…Am I the only one that sees that my daughter likes Shinji a lot?" Hiro asked Juna and Botou in the kitchen late that night.

"She must be the only one that doesn't see it," Juna expressed. "It wouldn't be the first time any of us that didn't see anything that our hearts desired."

"Like with me," went Botou, confessing to his lack of knowing that Mitsukai was in love with him until she told him years ago. "Maybe we should tell them."

"Give it another year, or a month…or a week," said Hiro to them, and he couldn't be had suggested those periods of which to wait on the two to figure it out.

-x-

Evangelion Unit-01, unchanged after ten years of disservice, stood in the underground facility where it had been sent to in order to keep it safe from foreign hands. Unchanged…or so it seemed. In the years that had gone by, it had been studied minutely, allowing the people tasked with its maintenance to learn that it was partially organic with mechanical features integrated into it over time, and that they needed equipment capable of providing power to the behemoth over long periods of time, as it had a limit of at least five minutes, which led them to assume that, while it could fight for extended periods, it was limited by other factors. With the discovery that certain chemicals, in addition to its armor, kept the organics from degrading over the years, the greatest discovery so far was that it seemed incapable of being operated by even the most experienced fighter pilots. There were seventeen men that attempted to gain control of the Eva, but the factors that hindered them made it impossible. Some were simply unable to fit inside the Entry Plug while others experienced a type of mental feedback that caused them severe headaches that lasted for several hours to three days.

The technology that this construct still possessed that was yet to be fully understood was what made this Evangelion a literal goldmine of knowledge that they, as scientists, couldn't resist.

"Welcome to Monarch's research and development facility, Shinji Ikari," the man from yesterday, who introduced himself as Namu Aoi, said to the young man, showing the Evangelion as it underwent further tests on its power regulations.

"I had almost forgotten how big the Eva was," Shinji expressed.

"At one-hundred meters in height, it stands over three-hundred feet."

"So, this is the man that killed Godzilla, isn't he?" Shinji and Namu turned to face a man that wore a patch over his right eye.

"Hello, sir," Shinji greeted the man.

"Shinji, this is Daisuke Serizawa," Namu introduced them to each other. "He's one of the men in charge of trying to extend the Eva's power limit."

Shinji bowed his head to the scientist.

-x-

 _No shame in trying,_ Shinji thought, a bit surprised that he was still able to fit in his plugsuit after ten years of disservice. _If I beat this Godzilla, that will be that. I hope I can do this and prevent further devastation._

As he stepped out of the small room he was sent to in order to change into his old plugsuit, he was led by a military soldier to where Unit-01's Entry Plug was waiting.

"I hope you can do this, kid," the soldier told him; despite the ten-year passage in time, Shinji, despite having aged, hadn't grown much so he could still pass for a young teen. "I lost some friends when that thing attacked the Tokai Village looking for food."

"I'm sorry for your loss," he apologized to him.

"Don't be. You didn't know about this until much later. We can't predict the future."

It was that sentence right there and then that reminded Shinji of what he had told the people the day after he killed the Tokyo Godzilla, that his future was one where half the world was dead because of a catastrophe that occurred fifteen years before his inception into the Eva program. His knowledge of what he knew about the future was still a haunting aspect of him, but something he hoped would be undone if the Japanese could locate people associated with the one ones he knew from his time, or at least prevent the Second Impact. But this guy had referred to the future where another Godzilla had turned up and started causing trouble.

"What were you doing before this?" The soldier asked him.

"I was a… I am a teacher's assistant," Shinji explained his current life's profession. "It was one of the things that was as far removed from the violence I was swept into in my youth."

"You must be a pretty good teacher's assistant, huh?"

"I consider myself to be very adequate. I just do my job and help the students."

"Which grade?"

"Freshman and senior grades. Seniors, though, rarely take me serious."

"It must be because of your height."

"My doctor says I'm a slow grower."

-x-

"…And these will allow you to stay in contact with him if this works?" Juna asked one of the technicians in charge of monitoring the communication equipment that was designed to work in sync with the communication equipment that had been found built into the Eva.

"Yes," the female technician answered her. "We've done this at least six times."

In front of the large window that allowed the people to look at Unit-01 from a safe distance, Mariko, who was present to see Shinji do what he used to do because his father had forced him into it, wondered how he was doing, as she saw him get placed into the Eva's Entry Plug. She didn't tell Juna or her father this, but she was worried about Shinji. It wasn't whether or not he could move the Eva like before after a decade, but how he was going to deal with another Godzilla that was similar to the one he had killed; just because he was able to defeat one under a few minutes, it didn't necessarily mean that he could face this one and under similar circumstances. While the Eva might've given the people an edge against a giant animal from another time in the past, she found herself thinking that it actually paled in comparison to the value that Shinji had in her mind. In her mind, the Eva didn't matter at all, and the man she met that ten years did.

-x-

As the plug began to fill up with the familiar LCL, Shinji found himself surprised that he could still fit in the seat and simply went with the flow. And then, his mind strayed away towards his relationship with Mariko…and the Taoist choker she had given him that he had tied to his left hand as a reminder that he had people waiting for him to come home.

 _Here goes,_ he thought, opening his mouth and swallowing the LCL into his lungs. _Still terrible._

He soon felt the process that was the synchronization between his nervous system and the Eva. It wasn't as annoying as it had been the earlier times when he was fourteen. While the scent of blood was still present, he felt that he was in sync with the purple behemoth.

-x-

"It's working," one of the male technicians uttered out, seeing that Shinji was in sync with the Eva.

At that moment, the Eva's eyes flashed on, surging with power.

-x-

Beyond the waters of Oshima Island, the second Godzilla emerged and began its trek towards the landmass. With its reserves of nuclear energy replenished, it had other intentions in mind. Ever since the total destruction of its original food source, it would have to seek out substitutes elsewhere, and this strange, new world above the waters of the one it resided in seemed to have suitable substitutes wherever they could be found. The only problem met with obtaining such substitutes was the persistence of these annoying, little creatures that were no match for it.

-x-

"Godzilla's been sighted, heading for Oshima Island," one of the technicians informed the personnel, going over a map of the archipelago.

"Why that island?" Juna questioned. "There's no nuclear energy there."

That's when Mariko, who had saw Unit-01 being lifted out of the facility by three helicopters that could handle its substantial weight, turned to face her cousin and say, "That's not true. Last year, it was discovered that there was a radiation pocket near Mt. Mihara. But because it's an active volcano, no one can go near the pocket in fear of causing an eruption."

"Well, I doubt that this giant reptile has any qualms with causing an eruption, Mariko."

"I'm pretty sure I can keep the beast from ever reaching that pocket," they heard Shinji say over the radio.

 _He must be as worried as we are,_ thought Mariko.

-x-

It wasn't so much a scent as it was a sense, but Godzilla knew where the next source of energy was for it to feed off of. Looking up at the massive mountain that smoke came out of, the beast didn't think to go anywhere near the volcano, as it recalled the painful, burning it experienced long ago, and didn't wish to relive it in a similar fashion.

Boom! Something exploded at its feet, and it looked away from the Mt. Mihara, towards a thing in the air that was spitting at it.

And behind it…was something else that was unusual. It looked like a giant, being carried by three larger, flying things. What didn't make any sense at all was that this giant looked like it was covered in plate that weren't in the same league as Godzilla's own flesh, which had toughened to endure life in the abyss, and the giant's form lacked any features that would've made it a survivor from long ago, as it lacked dorsal fins and a tail.

"Grr," Godzilla growled in thought, unbeknownst to the world.

-x-

"Are you seeing this?" Shinji asked the facility, stunned by the sight of the new Godzilla.

"We're seeing this," went Mariko over the radio. "I just can't believe it."

"Be careful, Shinji," he heard Juna say to him.

As the helicopters released the Eva, and it landed onto the ground in front of Godzilla, Shinji inhaled and glared at the radioactive dinosaur. Then, he activated a switch that released the Eva's Progressive Knife.

 _Protect the people,_ he thought, assuming a defensive stance in front of Godzilla. _Here goes._

Godzilla, on the other hand, suspected this giant was after the source of energy for itself. But it got there first. First come, first served. To defend its right to feed, it would have to overcome this unusual foe.

"Rrrrrraaaurgh!" It roared at the Eva, but the Eva seemed incapable of responding back.

That's when Unit-01 charged at the beast, its knife held back, prepared to stab at its flesh. After a decade of disservice, it was back to take on this new world.

-x-

 _Shinji,_ thought Mariko again, _don't you dare get killed out there._

On the screens around the room, they saw Unit-01 jam its blade into Godzilla's left side, causing the radioactive dinosaur pain.

To be continued…

A/N: I was meaning to finish this chapter, but other stories begged my attention. So, what do you think of this chapter where Shinji and Unit-01 get thrown back into service, but to face kaiju, not Angels? Do review.


	9. Debt

Creation began on 11-02-15

Creation ended on 11-13-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Debt

"Aaaaaaaahhh!" Asuka screamed, feeling the psychological pain of having her arms sliced off by the Angel.

As bluish-purple blood sprayed into the air, Unit-02, under Asuka's rage over having her arms cut off, started to charge towards the Angel.

"Asuka, no!" Misato shouted in Central Dogma. "Quick! Disconnect her nerve connections!"

But there was no time to do the order, as the Angel was faster than the life-saving action. However, the Angel didn't do anything to decapitate Unit-02. Instead of what was assumed to be decapitation, the Angel merely unleashed an energy blast against the red behemoth, knocking it to the ground.

Blast! The Angel was hit in the right side by the blue behemoth using a sniper rifle, but all it did was annoy the enemy.

Blast! It returned fire at Unit-00, knocking it aside and into an armored building.

Somehow, Asuka got back up and attempted to charge towards the Angel again. Unfortunately, the Angel's AT-Field blocked her, and she fell against it.

Bash! Zeruel knocked Unit-02 away, sending it crashing against a hillside.

"Asuka! Asuka!" Misato yelled over the intercom, but the redhead was dazed at the moment.

The Angel approached Unit-02, intent on finishing it off before moving forward with its agenda to dispose of this human enemy that stood between the Angels and finding Adam.

"Quick! Eject the Entry Plug!" Misato ordered the technicians.

"We can't!" Maya yelled back. "We've lost all contact with Unit-02!"

As her dizziness ceased, Asuka looked up and saw the Angel approaching her. She was unable to get up, and her Eva's legs weren't responding to her synchronization, which she didn't know was down.

" _The eternal arrogance of mankind will always be to believe that we control nature when it's the other way around,"_ Shinji's voice echoed in her mind as the Angel got closer. _"Eternal arrogance."_

Its sunken eyes started to glow with intensity.

Asuka closed her eyes, unwilling to give this Angel the satisfaction of seeing fear in her eyes.

BLAST! Zeruel, before he could unleash his fury on the red behemoth, was assaulted upon by a foreign beam of energy from the sky!

"Iiiiiiooo! Eeeeeee!" A screeching sound was heard, and the Angel looked up at the sky, seeing what shouldn't have existed, anymore, but was still among the remnants of the Earth.

-x-

NERV was surprised for the second time by the arrival of a creature that should've been possible, but was right in front of their eyes.

"No way!" Shigeru gasped.

Maya, entranced by the largest pair of wings she had ever seen on a butterfly, couldn't believe that one had attacked the Angel and got it away from Unit-02. Of course, she had never seen one that looked as though it had been wrapped in organic armor before.

"First, a giant dinosaur," went Hyuga, "and now a giant butterfly?"

"Make that two giant butterflies," Misato uttered, pointing towards another one that flew towards the Angel, this one not covered in armor, but had blue eyes as opposed to the one with green eyes.

-x-

Asuka was amazed by the two Mothras that appeared. She recalled how Shinji had written his conviction of the moth being of divine existence, and now, because of their mere presence, she, too, was convinced that they were, as well.

"Mothra," she uttered.

-x-

As Gendo left the facility that housed Rikka Ikari, he couldn't forget what his granddaughter had said to him when she looked at him. It was so innocent and child-like, despite her being elderly.

" _Excuse me, who are you?"_ She had asked him.

He viewed her the same way he would view the rest of Shinji's descendants: A disappointment. The girl couldn't tell him anything he wanted to know with a brain that was Swiss cheese and the boy's granddaughter that had his remains and memoirs ran off to keep from telling him what he wanted to know. One of these petulant children had to know where Unit-01's core was disposed of, and until he could find out where, Gendo viewed these disgraces as a priority to be handled with certainty.

And then, there were her words uttered…just as he tried to choke the life out of her.

" _Suki… Daddy…"_ She had cried out, and passed out from a lack of of oxygen.

Unfortunately, Gendo was unable to finish her off when he was caught by a little girl that had run off, leaving him with no alternative but to vacate as fast as he could before his attempt on Rikka's life was found out.

 _It was a mistake coming here,_ he thought, disgusted that the Third Child had such weak-minded children that he encouraged to keep away from Tokyo-3, NERV and the matter at hand with the Angels.

He was just as disgusted of Shinji's other choices that disgraced NERV, such as working with an agency that dealt with these creatures that couldn't project AT-Fields or threaten the future of mankind in the same capacity as the Angels could. It seemed that there was nothing about Shinji that he could proud of, whether they were his devotion to protecting mankind with Unit-01, his marriage to a woman from the past or his children and their children. There was no sense of major desire beyond the ones that ranged from a simple way of living or having a family, no global-changing goal that would enable them to be seen or heard, not even a scientific pedigree on any of them. It was like Shinji had been content with his descendants being a bunch of commoners without a single thought to change.

 _That spineless coward,_ he thought. _He and his descendants are a complete disgrace to the Ikari name!_

-x-

Taking what was left of his body while he still could, Zeruel fled from the battle between himself and the two Mothras that were able to harm him immensely.

The Mothras landed gracefully atop two armored buildings and simply looked down upon the world beneath them. The one that was covered in armor had shed it off to reveal bright and vibrant colors of fur and feathers that adorned its soft and durable, serrated wings.

"Iiiiiiiiooo," they both screeched.

Within NERV HQ, the personnel were amazed by the two being able to drive the Angel away.

"Did Shinji say that he saw one of these things before?" Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki asked Misato.

"He did," she answered him.

-x-

"Ugh," Suki shuddered, getting Mima's attention in the room.

"What's wrong?" She asked her.

"I just had a bad feeling," Suki explained her shudder. "You ever get that feeling that someone you don't know personally, but know of did something or try to do something very wrong to someone you know very well?"

"Only you don't know what it is or was? I only experienced that just once…and it was a week before my husband died the year before Grandpa Shinji did last year."

Suki then realized something she probably shouldn't have asked her cousin, but had to get it off her back by asking.

"If Tetsuo's dead, then how were you… I mean, Shinji looks a lot like him, though that's probably because we get most of our good looks from Grandpa Shinji."

"Tetsuo knew how to plan ahead, just in case something happened to him," Mima revealed. "I can't fault him on that. Once Aki was a bit older, I went to the clinic and got myself inseminated. Nearly nine months after that, I had a son and Aki had a little brother."

Suki then pressed her left palm against the small bulge of her belly. She wasn't completely honest with what she said to her cousin, but the reason for her shudder was due to the feeling that something had happened to her mother. There was no other way to describe this awful feeling that her mother had been placed in a dangerous situation. But she had been convinced that the facility Rikka had been admitted to was the safest in Sapporo and all of Hokkaido, and there wasn't a soul within the city that would want to mess with someone that was dying of a brain condition that could be slowed down but not undone. Except now, she wasn't convinced that her mother was alright.

"Just to be sure, I'm going to call the hospital where my mother is," she told Mima.

"Okay," Mima responded, seeing her take out her cell phone. "It could be nothing, all the same. I'm sure she's alright."

"Hello? Yes, this is Suki Ikari, calling to see how my mother, Rikka Ikari, is doing. What? When did this… Do you know who? Oh, God."

Mima saw Suki drop her phone and take in deep breaths.

"Suki?" She asked her, coming over to her side of the room. "Suki, what's wrong?"

"My mother," she panted. "They say she was attacked earlier today by a man that came to see her."

"Did they say who it was?"

"Yes, and that frightens me. A kid saw him try to strangle her and gave a description of what he looked like to the security guard working the floor she lives on."

"And?" Mima asked her, placing a comforting, left hand on her shoulder.

"It was him, Mima. It was Gendo."

It was that name, that accursed name that caused their grandfather a great deal of fear over their safety and not just the safety of his children, their parents, and their own children. There was one time that Suki once saw that their grandfather hadn't gotten much sleep on a Thursday night. And there was one afternoon with Kenji and his father, his son, Akikaze, where he once had an anxiety attack; none of them ever expected that such a pleasant game of ball between Akikaze and Kenji would bring up the painful lack of memories of Shinji and his own father. For this family and its time-displaced patriarch, this man that had exploited his son was no different from the Devil himself, playing a dangerous game that he wanted to win for himself, regardless of who got hurt in the process, even when the very people they had left were, in an hard-to-explain way, related to him.

-x-

"…Can someone explain to me why there are two, large bugs in the city that haven't been handled yet?" Gendo asked the personnel when he returned to the Geo-Front.

None of the people present in Central Dogma said anything about it. None of them were even looking at him, as they were looking at something over the bridge. When Gendo came over to see, he was surprised by what he saw.

Two women, floating in the air, just a meter above a large moth, singing.

"Mosura ya Mosura… Dongan kasakuyan indo muu… Rusuto uiraandoa… Hanba hanbamuyan… Randa banunradan… Tounjukanraa-kasaku yaanmu!" The two women sang.

When they stopped, the personnel applauded them, with the sole exception of Gendo.

"What is the meaning of this?" He asked again, and this time he was noticed.

"Uh, it turns out that they were here to repay a debt that they owed the Third Child," one of the female technicians explained.

The new matter was taken to Gendo's office, with Fuyutsuki, Ritsuko, Misato, Asuka and Rei. The two ladies stood on Gendo's desk with their large moth.

"…So…they were responsible for driving away an Angel?" Gendo had questioned. "And, exactly, what are they if not Angels?"

"Mothra and her son, Leo," went the little lady in red.

"And I presume that Mothra had some sort of encounter with one of our Evas in the past?"

"Yes," the one in blue answered. "The purple one with the horn."

"Then, you've both met Shinji?" Asuka asked them.

"The young man that once controlled it? Then, yes, we've met him once in person. He was such a kind person to offer his assistance in finding us all those years ago when we were captured. He saw Mothra in all her divinity and couldn't fight her, as she wasn't a threat." The red one expressed.

"But…why are you here? Really?" Fuyutsuki asked them.

"Before we parted ways, the man, Shinji, asked us to do him one favor," the blue one explained. "He made us swear we'd do it, just before he told us what it was. And then…he asked."

"He asked you to help us, didn't he?" Rei asked them.

"He did," the red one answered her. "He said that as much as he wanted to disbelieve it, he couldn't let go of his fear that something awful could happen to those that lived here and faced these creatures you call Angels."

"NERV hasn't been good with accepting help from anyone," went Ritsuko. "First, there was a giant dinosaur that might've been related to a dinosaur the Third Child had mentioned facing in the past, and now two, giant moths."

"A giant dinosaur, you say?" The red one asked. "Then that means that the Alpha Predator has returned from his ancient slumber in the abyss of time."

"Alpha Predator? Godzilla?" Asuka questioned. "Then, that creature was Godzilla that appeared just a few days ago?"

"He has been known by many names," the blue one explained. "Godzilla. Gojira. Alpha Predator. Grand Hunter. Unconquerable Dragon and many others. One other such title he has been known by…is the King of the Monsters."

"The King of the Monsters?" Rei uttered.

"However, the one that you must be referring to…isn't the one that the man faced in the years past," both ladies told them at the same time.

"In his diaries, he only ever wrote of two of them being around," Misato explained to them.

"If he faced two, then they were lesser members of the Alpha Predator's kind," they responded. "The one you saw…is like the grand elder of the species, far older than the two he encountered…and stronger than they could ever hope to be."

This was shocking. The knowledge that Shinji had faced two lesser members of the Godzilla species, and this one that they saw was greater than they could've imagine.

The ladies then looked at Gendo…and immediately knew there was no shred of kindness in him or any decency in his morals.

"We must be going now," the red one told them.

"Wait," Gendo uttered. "We need to know something."

"You're going to ask us of the purple behemoth's missing core," the blue one told him, "and the answer is no, we don't know where it is. It is likely lost to the abyss of time."

"Shinji had the core disposed of in his later years, and we're certain that he didn't confide in anyone out of fear that his family, particularly, his children and their children would be exploited." Misato explained to them.

"You'd be right to believe that," the red one said to her. "If he had the core disposed of out of concern for his family, then he would never confide in them about it. He was protecting them from that which is dangerous to not just the world, but himself and anyone else that used it, as well."

"You can't possibly know that," Gendo expressed, angered by this discovery.

"We've been around for thousands of year," they told him. "We have never lied before, and we don't lie about anything."

"Yet, you just showed up, and we don't know who you really are…or what you really are."

"Ikari," went Fuyutsuki to him. "That's enough."

Everyone turned to look at the Sub-Commander, surprised by his choice of words that were directed at Gendo in an attempt to calm him.

"They came here to repay a debt your son asked of them in the past. They came and repaid the debt. They have no reasons to keep any secrets from any of us. And there's nothing they can do that would help us restore Unit-01 to its functional state before it was displaced in the past. They didn't come here to help us do that."

Gendo looked at him, and held his tongue right then and there; he was still venting over his failed attempt on Rikka's life.

The ladies never took their eyes off Gendo, seeing only the slightest resemblance he had to his dead son, and seeing only a streak of cruelty within him.

"The purple behemoth is akin to a creature Shinji fought in the past that wasn't of this world," the blue lady said right then. "It was called Gigan."

"Gigan?" Asuka went. "You mean, that monster Shinji described in his diaries as some sort of creature with scythe-like arms and a saw that looked as though it had been built right into its abdomen?"

Everyone else looked at her.

"Am I the only one that even bothers to look into everything he wrote in them?" She questioned them.

Suddenly, the entire office blurred around them, and was replaced with a cave-like setting. It was dark, but a light that shone through a large hole in the ceiling bathed the cave in a gentle way. Moss and flowers blanketed the rocks and stone structures that looked centuries old Atop them were Mothra and Leo, as though they were atop thrones and being adored by various followers.

"What is this place?" Ritsuko wondered.

"It must be a cave from Infant Island," answered Asuka; truth be told, she must've been the only person that bothered to explore all the details of Shinji's diaries in order to learn everything that he experienced in the past before Second Impact. "Shinji visited it once with a group from that Monarch agency."

"This was one of the monsters that Shinji helped Mothra face…and drive away," the red lady told them, revealing a large statue of a strange creature with blade-like arms and three, fan-like flaps or spines on its back. "This was Gigan."

Gathering around the statue, the NERV members examined the detailed replica of the creature Shinji had used Unit-01 to face.

"Created by an ancient civilization from beyond the stars," the blue lady said, "and sent by another civilization with ideals of universal conquest, Gigan has appeared on Earth for thousands of years, each time a measure of another civilization has reached the would-be decadence of its existence. Gigan was an evil entity."

"When it fled for the eighth time, it didn't return for years after," the red lady expressed. "There was no fear or possibility that he would return."

"So Shinji fought this creature eight times?" Ritsuko asked them.

"He did. Each time with the assistance of Mothra and others. Even the most dangerous of the creatures of the Earth saw the threat Gigan posed."

Asuka turned away from the statue and looked at a cave wall, seeing carvings and paintings, and saw one cave painting that caught her eye.

"That painting over there," she uttered, pointing to the depiction of Unit-01, looking as though it had severed the right arm and tail of Gigan. "Did Shinji really do this?"

"He did," they revealed. "Gigan had made an attempt on Osaka in the last battle and Shinji couldn't risk anyone dying because of him. Since Gigan was just as cybernetic as his purple behemoth's body was, he figured that the civilization that made him couldn't have been able to repair him if he'd been damaged extensively. So, he took his knife and severed the arm and tail off. Gigan fled to avoid being killed off."

To think that Shinji came close to killing Gigan, to think that Gigan, fearing for its survival, fled the battle and hasn't been seen since that day, it was unbelievable.

Unfortunately, this didn't affect Gendo, whatsoever.

"Do you," he heard Rei speak up, "know how he died?"

She was asking the tiny women this question; none of Shinji's diaries or his relatives had explained how the boy they once knew departed from this world.

"It was during his slumber," the blue one answered her, "that his heart stopped."

"He died in his sleep?" Asuka asked. "Did it…hurt him?"

She nodded in the negative.

"The only thing that ever hurt him…was the feeling that he couldn't change what had happened, even when he warned people of the past the brutality of the future."

"That must've solidified in him after he tried to stop his mother after seeing for the first time in a long time…and his last time alive."

"What?" Gendo uttered out. "What did you say? He saw his mother? When was this?"

"It was on a video tape," Asuka explained. "His last recording. He tried to warn her of what she was going to do was going to cause pain for his younger self, and she laughed at him, thinking he was crazy. It broke him."

Fuyutsuki suddenly recalled a memory that he was certain hadn't occurred before in his past. But it became clear to his conscious. He remembered Yui speaking to him about having seen an elderly man that somehow knew something he wasn't supposed to know, and that if she did what she had done, it was going to end badly for Shinji, but she believed the man to be senile due to his advanced age, that he was just speaking gibberish, absolute nonsense. Never, until just now, did he ever suspect that the old man Yui had spoken to him about was her time-displaced son, elderly because he had been stranded in the Nineteen-Fifties, reduced to taking the long way into the future, acting on memories that were traumatic and left scars that didn't heal, even after death.

" _So, you didn't believe him when he spoke to you?"_ He remembered asking Yui as they went to unfinished Eva that day.

" _Honestly, I didn't,"_ she had told him. _"How could he possibly know what could happen? That this would condemn Shinji? He had to be senile. Or it was probably Alzheimer's or dementia settling in. Even if it weren't so, and he could know what was going on, there's no turning back from this."_

" _But, just suppose, what if this doesn't work out for GEHIRN…and it does condemn Shinji?"_

" _It won't be that way."_

 _She was certain that everything was going to work out in the end,_ Fuyutsuki thought, now knowing better than that because nothing worked out for the boy that died an old man with some emotional weight that didn't leave him.

"He said that he had failed in trying to change anything that has happened in the years before and after Second Impact," Asuka had continued. "But that's not true. He didn't fail. We failed him."

-x-

As Zeruel made over the ocean, he was nearly regeneration of his damaged body.

SLASH! Something had attacked him, and caused his core to detach from his body.

Splash! He fell into the water and sank to the bottom.

His core, buoyant, was soon scooped up and devoured…by some sort of massive, scarlet, lobster-like creature that emerged from the deep.

Once ingested, the core began to change the creature. Its claws became larger and its scarlet carapace became streamlined, almost resembling armor plates. From out of its back, the same material that made Zeruel's toilet paper-like arms appeared and were reshaped into fins that looked like wing structures. Lastly were the creature's eyes, originally black and beady, were now large and golden.

It then swam towards its next destination. Whatever that creature was that it devoured a part of, it changed it, made it stronger, and it craved more power. Somewhere out in the water right now, was another source of energy that would satisfy this power craving. And then, it would be known as the Horror of the Deep once again.

-x-

 _"If the Alpha Predator has returned, then it's possible that those that survived this Second Impact, by either going into hiding or entering a state of hibernation, will return in due time,"_ the tiny ladies, revealed to be known as the Shobijin, had informed NERV as they left later that day.

 _And by others, they meant other creatures Shinji had faced in the past,_ thought Misato, discovering from Asuka, who invested herself in the history of monsters Shinji used Unit-01 to defend Japan from, just how many he had faced before retiring, and how many they were likely to encounter if they come back. _I can't believe Shinji faced over twenty-five different monsters before retiring._

" _He didn't fail. We failed him."_ Asuka's voice repeated in the purple-haired woman's mind, stressing out how Shinji had tried to change the future through his time in the past.

Back in Central Dogma, the tactical strategist was trying to come up with a plan of action that could be used against some of the creatures Asuka had found, from Shinji's point of view, were the more dangerous one that had been collected and preserved years prior to Second Impact.

"So, we're in for, potentially, more of these creatures if they have survived?" Hyuga asked Misato.

"That's what the Shobijin informed us," she told him. "I'm starting to wonder why Shinji didn't just kill these creatures when he was alive and marooned in the past."

"Didn't one of his diaries and video entries state that he couldn't bring himself to kill two pterosaurs or even let them kill themselves when they had more value alive?"

"Because of their scientific value, but that had to be because he worked with an agency that dealt with finding and preserving the ones that could be preserved easily."

"Still, when Shinji was here…and younger, he didn't seem like the violent type. Maybe a fly, but a dog or a cat, even a pigeon, he seemed incapable of harming anything."

"According to Asuka, he did kill two creatures that were dangerous because they were completely carnivorous. A Kumonga and Kamacuras, a giant spider and mantis, respectively."

"Not many people like insects. We're scared by them, they freak us out."

"Still, surely, Shinji could've us all a favor by eliminating the other creatures, such as…hold on a moment (she picked up a notepad and looked at the list and characteristics of the creatures Asuka relayed to her through the diary she had read)… Here, such creatures as this Baragon, which, according to Asuka through Shinji's diary, was less than thirty meters in height. He could've ripped it in half or stomped it to death."

-x-

In his office, Gendo was displeased with the message the Shobijin gave him, which, in his mind, sounded more like a warning or a threat.

" _Like the Gigan, who was deprived of any hope of free will and left with a cruel facade of a soul, people with cruel intentions will lead only to self-destruction,"_ they told him. _"Those that refuse to let go of their desires that they seek to fulfill at the cost of other people's lives, they will face forces that they cannot escape from."_

 _Little women,_ he thought. _What do they know?_

On his desk were several photos from the Third Child's memoirs, all photos of his children and his wife, and they irritated him to no end. Their smiles, their eyes, their very relation to the Third Child, it was sickening. Not only did he lack a core for Unit-01, he lacked information on the missing core's whereabouts from anyone that might've known about it. Hell, he couldn't even get the whereabouts from the Shobijin, who claimed to know nothing about it.

" _It was during his slumber that his heart stopped,"_ the blue one had revealed to the First and Second Children when they asked how the Third Child had departed from life. _"It was during his slumber that his heart stopped."_

 _And according to Major Katsuragi and Fuyutsuki, who were informed by his eldest grandchild, the Third Child's remains were cremated. If they had been recovered, we could've probably created a clone of him for future use._ Gendo thought; since NERV had access to various technologies to aid in its objective to fight the Angels, this included genetic technologies kept away from the public, so the possibility of cloning people had been within the realm of their capability. _Ungrateful brat thinks he's always three steps ahead of everyone else. He went and made sure we were left helpless against the nothingness of the Third Impact without even trying._

-x-

"…They're gonna make sure nobody tries the same stunt again, Suki," Kenji told his cousin that night, reminding her that the hospital her mother was in had tightened their security. "If he tries to get to her again, the guards' orders are to shoot him. In his head, if necessary."

In Mima and Suki's room, the three adults were trying to wrap their heads around why Gendo would attack Rikka when she knew absolutely nothing about anything about what Grandpa Shinji had done with his later years. Even if her brain weren't as damaged as it was by her Alzheimer's, she wouldn't know anything worth talking about. She had been Granpa Shinji's youngest daughter and fourth child, the practical baby of his family. And yet, Gendo attacked her…and came close to killing her, and they didn't know why.

"We're just gonna waste ourselves trying to grasp at a picture we don't know what looks like without all the pieces," went Mima to them.

"I can only sum it up to the fact that we all know in many ways," said Suki to them, "and that's that Gendo is just an awful person."

"Amen to that, cousin," Kenji agreed.

"You still owe us one explanation, though," Suki told him. "What's with the little girl I saw you with?"

Mima then looked at her brother and got curious about what Suki was talking about.

"What little girl?" She asked them.

"You mean Hana?" Kenji questioned. "It's a long story."

"We're not going anywhere, brother."

"Hana Kyuusei…is the only daughter of my best friend and a girl I'm fostering until I'm able to adopt her as my own daughter."

"What happened to her parents?" Suki asked him.

Kenji sighed and explained, "Her father, Genki Kyuusei, is serving a life sentence in prison for killing her mother, Takiko Kyuusei. This was almost two years ago. Takiko made me promise that if anything happened to her, I'd look after Hana."

"Her father just killed her mother?" Mima questioned. "That's awful."

"It is. Hana has, however, put that tragedy behind her."

"So, how'd you end up being friends with someone like Takiko?" Suki asked.

"We both met on a naval carrier just like this one years ago. My initial work into using plasma energy was what attracted her to Monarch at the time." Kenji answered her.

"It sounds like you were attracted to her," Mima expressed her opinion.

"It was fifteen years ago," he kindly retorted, "and she had just gotten out of high school. Even if I had been attracted to her, she was already arranged to be married to Genki."

All three seemed to have that word as part of a shared list of words to dislike: Arranged. To them, it was another way of saying the word "manipulate" in a bad way. To go around making decisions for those that may not have agreed with such choices, for better or for worse.

"But were you?" Suki asked him.

"Was I what?" He asked back.

"Were you attracted to her?"

He sighed and expressed, "It wasn't that kind of attraction. It was a platonic attraction, at best."

-x-

"…I find it hard to believe that Shinji accepted this as a truth," went Ritsuko to Misato that evening at NERV HQ, looking through a copy of one of the Third Child's diaries. "That we're eternally arrogant when it comes to nature."

Misato looked up at the faux-blond woman and retorted, "In the worst ways, we are arrogant when it comes to nature. We think it's under our control instead of it being the other way around. He just discovered that fact sooner than we did."

"When it comes to fighting off mankind's extinction, it's necessary to be arrogant."

"Except he wasn't really fighting off an extinction event. He was just defending a nation from these giant animals."

"Still, to call us arrogant… It's uncalled for."

"I've seen arrogant people before."

-x-

Awakening from her slumber in the dead of the night, Rei sighed as she recalled the awful revelation of how Shinji died in his sleep. Awful because he died knowing that he couldn't change anything. The only kindness in his death was that when his heart stopped, it was painless. And as much as she wanted to think that this world was full of sadness and pain, she couldn't think of it being that way completely. It was because Shinji still had people he wanted to live in a future he could be proud of, even when he was gone.

Looking over at her bed stand, she gazed upon a photo she took from his memoirs, of these children he had in the past with this woman he had married. She suspected that he might've caused minor changes in the past when he was transported back there by the Twelfth Angel, but these changes were akin to ripples in the water of a river. Any number of ripples, however unnoticed by the river, were minor in the direction the stream was going. Still, Rei found that Shinji's ripples in the river of time had to have made even the most minor impact something to be proud of.

"You are forever missed, Shinji Ikari," she uttered in the darkness.

To be continued…

A/N: Impressive chapter, no? The only thing I hate about it is that I finished it on Friday the Thirteenth.


	10. Ripples in Time

Creation began on 11-13-15

Creation ended on 11-15-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Ripples in Time

A/N: Small ripples cause only minor changes in history. How small the changes caused by the ripples can mean anything.

The country couldn't be stopped from hearing about the new Godzilla that appeared, or how the return of the purple giant that killed the first Godzilla. It was also unavoidable for the public to learn from the government of a serious decision that had been made.

"It's the Prime Minister!" One of the reporters outside a building yelled, and dozens of other reporters tried to gather around the man in order to get a statement from him.

A woman stood in front of a cameraman and held a microphone to her mouth.

"It's been confirmed," she expressed. "The decision has come through."

"Japan is to give up on nuclear power plants?" Another woman asked her.

"Yes, that's right," she answered back.

It had been decided by the government that, due to the second Godzilla's ravage of the Tokai Village to reach the nuclear power plant, along with the inescapable possibility that it could return to attack other nuclear power plants in other parts of the country, the proliferation of nuclear energy stations would be disbanded. Despite the trouble this would cause for the people, they had to try and minimize the threat this Godzilla posed until it was dealt with by the purple giant that was back to handle the situation.

" _In the future,"_ went Shinji to the Prime Minister and his aides crew during a secret meeting, informing them of some of methods used to supply the nonexistent Tokyo-3 with energy. _"Nuclear energy usage has been reduced due to the use of non-nuclear methods. The people rely on sources like solar, wind and water-based, renewable energy. The military use a weapon called an N² or Non-Nuclear bomb as a conventional substitute. It works similar to a nuclear bomb, but without the fallout. It just causes a temporary EMP that lasts for a few minutes."_

" _And these N² weapons could be used more efficiently than nuclear weapons?"_ The Prime Minister asked him, just wanting to make sure he understood clearly.

" _Yes, but they always complained every time they were used. They had to redraw the map of wherever they were used."_

" _So, if we were to switch over to renewable energy sources over nuclear energy, we could minimize the potential casualties caused by Godzilla?"_

" _That is what we believe, sir. If it's attracted to radiation sources, it'll try to get to them any way that it can, which includes going through cities and towns. But if there are no cities and towns relying on these sources, then they're likely to be ignored. Although, it's only a theory, a possibility until we can dispose of Godzilla."_

The left arm. That was all Shinji was able to take from Godzilla before the Eva's power ran out. Just the left arm, up to where the elbow would've been on a human body. While the internal battery's limit had been increased to thirty minutes, it had been insufficient in allowing Unit-01 to permanently dispose of the creature. This meant that the Monarch scientists would have to expand the time limit further.

But in the meantime, Japan would have to make do without electricity provided by nuclear energy. With the information provided by Shinji about the alternate energy sources that could substitute the complicated and hazardous power source.

" _Let's hope that this works out for us and not just against Godzilla, Mr. Ikari,"_ the Prime Minister expressed towards the end of the meeting with Shinji.

Shinji, of course, silently cringed at being addressed so formally. It would still be a while before he could ignore such a formality that he didn't take any joy in because of his strained and nonexistent relationship with his father. He didn't even want the students he assisted in educating at the school he worked at addressing him as such. Just the mere thought of a comparison between the two would have him in a mood for a few hours to even two days.

-x-

"…Truth be told, I kinda like drinking tea by candlelight," Botou expressed to the others a week later after the government's decision to forgo nuclear energy.

"Yeah, it sets a certain mood," Mitsukai responded.

"Yeah, it does," added Shinji, setting his cup of ginger tea down.

"Just as long as you're careful not to burn anything but the candles themselves," went Juna, pouring Hiro another cup.

"Fire," he uttered, "considered a blessing by the gods themselves. Their way of allowing us to light up the darkness."

As the night went on, much later was Shinji in his room, looking out his window at the water below, overlooking the tiny, flickering lights of the small town on the other side. It may have been the people resorting to flashlights over candles, but Shinji was reminded that they were trying to get by without much electricity until later. The government was working at a heavy pace to get a hydroelectric station together and generating power to the masses. It was likely another week until it was finished…and then construction on the other alternate energy plants would begin.

Creak. A small sound was made behind him.

"Hey, Shinji," he heard Mariko behind him.

She climbed onto his bed and sat against the window on his right side.

"Hey, Mariko," he greeted her, turning to face her, but found himself speechless by her current attire she had on.

It was her blue and white nightie, which, in his mind, always seemed to give a sense of being see-through, allowing his see her shoulders and waist, along with everything else that wasn't covered by her lingerie. While it might've made her seem more attractive, it made him uncomfortable, though he never let her know because he respected her.

"Penny for your thoughts?" She asked him.

"You think the clean energy goal will help the country?" He asked her, sighing.

"I see nothing wrong with using alternate energy," she answered him. "I feel the warmth of the sun on my skin all the time when I'm outside. If sunlight can provide people with power in the future you're from, then who says it can't do the same here? We'd be several steps into the future, thanks to you."

Shinji found himself wondering anything he did right now would affect anything in the future. He did want to feel like he was making some sort of impact.

"Thank you, Mariko," he praised her.

-x-

 _Present Day_

"So, his encounter with the second Godzilla and the government's decision to give up nuclear power plants was the reason the country has no nuclear energy," went Ritsuko to Gendo, having looked at one of Shinji's diaries that detailed the Third Child's meeting with the Prime Minister of that time.

Nobody had ever noticed it before, but NERV's reliance upon power by geothermal, hydroelectric, solar and wind-based energy sources explained how the very country had been named one of the most cleanest on the planet, before and after Second Impact, with the minor exception of Tokyo itself. But after this discovery from Shinji's diary, it seemed that the deceased boy had caused even the most minor of changes to the nation's history.

This, of course, made Gendo even more resentful of his son's achievements. Using his knowledge of the future to change the past by removing the majority of the country's nuclear proliferation had limited the usage of nuclear weapons at the Japanese's disposal. It had also increased the development of clean energy weapons as a consequence. He felt that he had been one upped by the boy, regardless of the large gap in time between them.

"There's something else, too," Ritsuko expressed. "The MAGI came up with another discovery. Through salvaged records, they may have found the Third Child's wife."

Gendo looked at her.

"There was no mention of her on any death certificate, and none of the written or video diaries of the Third Child mention her as deceased. This would indicate that this…Mariko Ikari is still alive. Last reported location was at Nagoya, another place unchanged by Second Impact."

And for the first time in a long time, Gendo removed his glasses and his face contorted into a frown of rage.

"Where in Nagoya?" He asked Ritsuko.

-x-

Strolling along the Tokugawa Garden, an elderly woman in her mid to late-seventies, dressed in a green and purple yukata, stopped in front of one of the waterfalls that occupied its layout. She seemed to have a worn face that, interestingly enough, had no wrinkles associated with the negatives of aging. However, she had required the use of a cane once she had reached her sixties. And accompanying her was a little girl of nine years with brownish hair.

"Excuse me, miss," the elderly woman turned to face three men in black suits. "Are you, by any chance, Mariko Ikari?"

The woman didn't respond, so the girl spoke up for her.

"Who's asking?" She directed at them.

"I'm afraid this is adult business, little girl," one of the men, the same one that asked if the elder was who they were asking for, responded.

"If you're looking for Mariko Ikari, I'm afraid it is her business," the elder woman uttered to them. "You do realize that black is such an overused color, right?"

"Again. Are you Mariko Ikari?"

"And like the little girl asked you, who is asking?"

-x-

 _If she is alive, then maybe she knows something that could remedy NERV's problems concerning Unit-01,_ thought Gendo, staring down at an old photo of the teenage Shinji with a young woman around his age that had been Mariko before they ever tied their knot. _What could've caused them to split up prior to his death?_

-x-

While not as vulnerable as she seemed when she used her cane as a hitting weapon against the lead man in black for shoving the little girl aside, the elderly woman was as vulnerable as the next elder when threatened with a gun. This had left her no choice but to oblige the men and introduced herself as Mariko Ikari, the widow of Shinji Ikari and the guardian of Shiruba Kirigoe, the only daughter of a friend that past away at around the same time as her husband had.

Being escorted to a car, Mariko thought of Shinji, Rikka and the grandchildren and great-grandchildren she had left in order to seek enlightenment to find out where she stood in her husband's life. Her search for such enlightenment had cost her her husband, who died in his sleep. She didn't even need to ask if he went peacefully and quietly into the eternal slumber.

 _I thought we would go together,_ she thought, referring to passing away with Shinji. _He gave up almost all he had to stop the darkness of the future from being written, even when it all seemed hopeless. But I still had faith in him, no matter what. I never gave up on his hopes of a better future. Shinji, Izumi, Akikaze, Shinsetsu, Rikka_ _…_ _I owe you all that I have left in this life._

On her left side, Shiruba looked at her guardian and saw her face locked in a bitter expression. It was always like that whenever she thought of her husband and children that have gone on to have families of their own or have past away. She could remember the day she had returned to Sapporo to grieve with her grandchildren over the new loss, but was surprised by the fact that she had a daughter that wouldn't understand that her father was gone because of a condition she had that kept her from recalling new memories most of the time.

"Elder?" She asked Mariko. "Are you alright?"

Mariko looked down at her and responded, "I'm fine, Shiruba."

To be continued…

A/N: And there you have it. Shinji's wife is still very much alive. What do you think?


	11. Words of Content, Words of Contempt

Creation began on 11-15-15

Creation ended on 11-21-15

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Words of Content, Words of Contempt

Being led underground was not doing well for Shiruba, as Mariko noticed. The little girl suffered from mild claustrophobia because one time, she was intentionally locked in a broom closet by her mother for an hour. So Mariko gave the child her bracelet on her right arm as a coping mechanism for the duration of their time in the Geo-Front; Shiruba, like most children, had an attraction to shining objects.

"Ooh, nice and shiny," Shiruba expressed, feeling content with the bracelet now.

As they vacated the express elevator and walked towards the metal pyramid that was NERV HQ, Mariko thought of Shinji's recollection of this place, and felt a measure of repulse for the agency that had initially forced her husband into a life of conflict with no real measure of a life beyond it. The twisted need to control people, the half-truths about the Angels, about why they were called Angels, and the man behind it all that was no patriarch or a father to her husband.

"Welcome to NERV HQ," greeted an elderly man in a brownish uniform to Mariko and Shiruba. "I am…"

"Kozo Fuyutsuki," Mariko cut him off. "I know who you are. My husband mentioned you a few decades ago."

"Your…husband?"

"You knew him as Shinji."

Somehow, Fuyutsuki felt that this elderly woman's so-called invite to here by Gendo was anything but an invite.

"Right. Well, this way, please."

He led the woman and little girl through the hall and to Central Dogma.

It was there that Mariko saw several faces that were associated to her late husband.

"Who are they?" A woman with purple hair questioned, pointing to the elder woman.

"You must be Misato Katsuragi," Mariko expressed, looking at her, and then at the young, red-haired girl. "And she must be Asuka Langley Soryu."

Asuka, quite surprised that this woman that they just met knew who they were, was now wondering who she was. There was something about her that seemed…similar to someone else.

"Who are you?" She asked her.

"Mariko," the elder introduced herself. "Mariko Ikari."

Misato, Asuka and Rei (whose face definitely expressed it) were shocked to be standing in front of the late Third Child's widowed wife.

"My God," Asuka uttered. "You're Shinji's wife."

Mariko nodded her head in the positive, and then noticed an empty chair nearby, and went over to sit in it.

Shiruba went with her and sat on her lap.

"My doctor tells me I shouldn't be on my feet for long periods of time," Mariko expressed, feeling relief for her knees. "Even with a cane, my age has hindered me in certain ways that it would any other person."

"Then why are you here?" Rei had asked her.

"You mean, Gendo didn't tell any of you? He sent his men in black to fetch me, just as they had my husband when he was here."

Asuka then realized that Shinji's father would also be Mariko's father-in-law, though the elder woman sounded like she really didn't like Gendo for any reason.

"And by fetch, I mean bring me here against my will by threatening Shiruba," Mariko explained further, holding onto the little girl on her lap.

"What?!" Misato gasped.

-x-

"You had your son's wife brought here against her will?!" Fuyutsuki questioned Gendo in his office. "Ikari, this is wrong!"

"She's associated with the Third Child," Gendo tried to rationalize his reason for having Mariko here. "He may have confided in her about the Eva."

"It won't change anything, no matter what she says to you. He took the secret to the grave with him when he died so that his family would be kept free from the Eva. You're just looking for an excuse to harass your son's wife and descendants, thinking one of them will tell you what you want to hear."

But Gendo had already made up his mind about Mariko. He'd been made up his mind about all of Shinji's family. They were all capable of keeping secrets regarding Unit-01's missing core that made it a useless cyborg, and this made them not just a hindrance to NERV, but a thorn in his side…and a thorn that needed to dealt with.

"I can't believe I once had a curious mind about you," they both heard the voice of Mariko, as said woman slowly entered the office. "You're no different from much of the men I've met over the years, thinking they're almighty and can walk over others."

Although she was much older than they were, Fuyutsuki felt the widow of Shinji was intimidating enough with her cane adorned with koi fish engravings. And there was something else about her that seemed unusual.

"Didn't you have a little girl with you?" Gendo asked her.

"I've asked Ms. Katsuragi to watch over her until I come back for her," she revealed. "There's only so much I can do to protect my ward when troubled by troublesome people."

"Watch your tone around here."

Mariko sighed and expressed that all Gendo was doing was threatening people whenever he felt the desire to cause them harm.

"Whatever you seek from others, they don't have what you want, Gendo," she told him.

"Now, what makes you so sure of that?" He asked her back.

"Men like you always have a one-track mind about whatever it is you have it set on."

"Oh, really?"

"Yes, really. In fact, that's one of the most useful bits of wisdom I learned from my relationship with Shinji. People with one-track minds tend to ignore or overlook everything else."

Before Gendo could say anything else, Fuyutsuki spoke up.

"That is an inescapable truth," he uttered to her. "My apologies for your unexpected visit."

"Oh, I'm sure the only one at fault for my and Shiruba's capture is my awful excuse for an in-law, who, due to the confusing passage of time, is younger than I am. I look at you, Mr. Fuyutsuki, and I don't see a man of cruelty, even for the sake of cruelty. Your reason for being here, I won't bother to trouble you by asking. Everyone's reason for being involved with an agency like this is their own. I just hope that there's a sense of morality to the reason."

That, of course, had Fuyutsuki reflect upon his reason for being affiliated with NERV.

"Your husband was affiliated with an agency called Monarch, I presume?" He asked her.

"He was with them…and I supported his decision to capture the planet's most unusual of animals whenever possible…and remove the most dangerous ones whenever necessary."

"Enough meaningless chatter," went Gendo to them, but more to Mariko. "You're only here for one reason, and that's to explain a NERV-related matter."

Mariko frowned at him; so far, Gendo wasn't giving her any reason to see him through different eyes. She couldn't see him as anything less than an immoral man.

"Your…husband had something of immense value disposed of," he told her. "It is imperative that it's found and returned here. You lived with him up until his final days. He must've confided in you about it."

Mariko sighed and sat down in one of the chairs in front of his desks; she knew where he was going with this conversation, and it was just as one-tracked as she knew his mind was.

"The core of Evangelion Unit-01," he continued. "Where was it disposed of?"

"I can't tell you what I never asked Shinji about," she revealed to him.

"You never questioned Shinji about the Eva?" Fuyutsuki asked her.

"It was a subject we would rarely, if ever, talk about. Eva was for defending the nation against the monsters that were a threat to the people. The less I knew about it, the better it was for the both of us. I viewed it as unnecessary to bring up during the periods of peace."

"That doesn't change the fact that you've seen the Eva before," Gendo retorted.

"I've seen it a few times. Mostly whenever a town or city was under attack by creatures other than Godzilla before he was captured and confined. But after he made the choice to discard the Eva, I told him not to tell me what it was he had done to it to ensure it would never work again for anyone. If you have it, don't share it. But if you share it, then you haven't got it."

"Cease speaking in riddles!"

But Mariko didn't falter in her verbal feud with her father-in-law. She wouldn't let this man, this disgrace, bully her.

"I can't tell you what you want to hear…because I don't know what Shinji did with the Eva's core. I can't tell you what I don't know. I never wanted to know. I never needed to know. Hence, whatever it is you seek from others, they don't have what you want. Even if I did know where the core was disposed of, I wouldn't reveal the secret to you or anyone else."

"And why is that?" Gendo demanded to know.

"Because I owe it to Shinji to keep quiet about such matters. The Eva he operated a decade after his arrival in Nineteen-Fifty-Four was a double-edged sword in its own right. As beneficial as it was for defending the people, I couldn't stand that it was depriving my Shinji of his life and family. Especially after my father passed away three months after we got married."

"So, basically, even if all of mankind was placed in jeopardy," went Fuyutsuki, trying to make sure he understood her correctly, "and you knew where the missing core was, you wouldn't reveal it to anyone…because you respected your husband's wish that your children and their children would not be involved in NERV's affairs with the Angels?"

"That's right," she answered him.

Fuyutsuki, even though it went against Gendo's scenario, wanted to applaud this woman for her association to Yui's son, despite the awfulness that had been done to her family, especially Gendo himself.

But Gendo wasn't very accepting of this revelation. There was no way this woman was that devoted to the Third Child to the point that she didn't want him to share any sensitive information about the Eva with her.

-x-

"…Your guardian," went Asuka to Shiruba, taking the girl's attention off the bracelet. "Is she really the widow of a one Shinji Ikari?"

Shiruba looked at the older girl and nodded in the positive.

"I saw her cry over an elder named Shinji," she explained to her. "I thought he was asleep until a woman that was his granddaughter explained that he was asleep, but he wouldn't wake up ever again because everything in him had fallen asleep. Mariko said that she was sorry she left him to seek enlightenment on where she stood in his life. It was the first time I ever saw her cry."

Asuka lowered her head…and immediately left Central Dogma.

"Was she a friend of his?" Shiruba asked Misato.

"Yes…and no," she answered her. "It's complicated."

"Mariko acting as my guardian for another nine years is complicated. My parents' departure from this life is complicated. Relationships aren't complicated. You're either a friend or relative to a person…or you're not. It can't be yes and no, only one or the other. Mariko tells me about her family…but I don't know them personally. So I can't say I'm related to them in any meaningful perspective."

"I don't believe that anyone here was close enough with Shinji to be called a friend," went Rei, including herself in the matter of the Third Child and his relationships.

As she walked in the hall, Asuka found herself wanting to question the widow on what wasn't in Shinji's memoirs…and the type of man he was outside of his written and video diaries. Just a few days ago, she viewed Shinji as a waste of time and effort for the Evangelion program, but after the Twelfth Angel incident and the discovery of him being thrown over fifty years into the past with no way back to the present through a shortcut, she just ended up regretting that day. Maybe if she hadn't said all those things she said, maybe if she hadn't let her ego, her pride get in the way, then maybe he'd be here…and not in an urn in Hokkaido after dying of old age and other factors that robbed him of his life spent trying to undo the darkest parts of history.

"…Don't you dare walk away from me, you old hag!" She heard the commander yell out from within his office, presumably to Mariko.

"There is nothing more to talk about," she heard the woman respond to him as she got closer to the man's office. "You could ask me until I turn eighty and go blind, and I wouldn't have an answer for you that you'd want to hear."

As she saw the elderly woman appear out in the hall from within the office, Asuka stopped in front of her.

Mariko was about to speak up when Gendo came from behind her, shoving away a concerned Fuyutsuki, and making an attempt to grab her.

"Behind you!" She warned Mariko, and the elderly woman sidestepped to her right, causing Gendo to fall past her.

Gendo turned around and tried to grab her a second time, but Mariko used her cane…and bashed him hard on his head, forcing him onto his bottom.

"You brought me here against my will, not the other way around, Gendo," she told him. "I told you I can't tell you where the Eva's core because I don't know where, as I've never wanted or needed to know from Shinji where. You refuse to accept this as the absolute truth, and this is how you react? You're as hopeless as you are disgraceful. I almost didn't want to believe him when he told me that he had suspected you of favoring the Eva a little more than you wouldn't acknowledge him as your son, but now I see the truth. You invested more in a weapon than you did your family, and that's a bigger disgrace for one such as you. I won't waste any more of my time on you; you're not worth a heart attack. If you wish to persist, that's your decision, but all you've done is push people away. People that do that…are no better than the sum of their fears of being around others. So they stand alone, at a loss for any relationship that makes them less than loners…and less pitiable."

She set her cane down and walked away from the man that was holding his head, and slowly past Asuka, who looked at Gendo with a look of pity.

"You could've been an honest man," they heard her say, "if not for the shame that you don't seem to understand anything or anyone."

Asuka then followed Mariko, just wanting to ask her about Shinji. But the elderly woman slowed down and leaned against the wall, catching her breath.

"Do you need anything, Mrs. Ikari?" She offered.

"Just a breather," the woman responded. "Not as agile as I used to be."

"Is it alright if I ask you a question about Shinji?"

"Feel free."

"I…well, I mean… Did he ever…mention me in the past?"

Mariko recalled the times when her husband would explain to her the time he had to work with a young redhead that was as violent, both verbally and physically to those around her as she had been or would be beautiful to look at.

"He did," she answered the girl. "I asked him once if he loved you…"

"One of his diaries revealed that his only affections were for you," Asuka cut her off, letting her know that there was nothing between Shinji and any other girl he wasn't romantically involved with. "He loved you only."

"I still had to wonder," Mariko expressed. "He couldn't understand why a girl like you could be beautiful to look at and violent to be around at the same time. I had to introduce him to the world of mythology in order to explain certain aspects of how women could or would act around others. It was hard to believe that he was a man from the future that never heard of Greek, Norse or even his own country's mythological history. The only creatures he seemed to know of before we ever met were these Angels he fought, the angels he understood as messengers from the heavens themselves, the first Godzilla that he saved Tokyo from in Nineteen-Fifty-Four…and the oni, which Unit-01 seemed to be based on in its armored appearance."

"And…what did he think of me after he was introduced to mythology?"

"He wouldn't change his opinion of you, but he did develop the minor fear that you could've been a femme fatale if you were without a degree of restraint."

"A femme fatale? I don't know what that even means."

"It's what the French call a woman who is deadly. It's no different from being called a harpy or a siren from the Greek mythology, as they were also femme fatales."

"Is that all that a woman is when referred as such? Just…deadly?"

"Deadly…but beautiful. They will use their beauty as a weapon when it suits them. They're only such when they're set upon actually harming someone without limit."

"Then, I guess I fit that category," Asuka accepted.

"Teasing and taunting are not the same as seducing, harming or killing," Mariko told her.

"It's my fault he's not here. It's my fault he ended up stuck in the past."

"You wanted him to, what was he once mentioned to me, show you that he had a backbone. I'm sure if you read whichever diary he had written it in, you would know what his thoughts were about ending up in Tokyo the night it was attacked by Godzilla. While not out to prove anything to anyone, he certainly had more than a backbone when he saw the people suffering. Not a hero, but a great man."

"It could've been me, though. It should've been me."

Mariko then uttered, "It's a good thing that it wasn't you. I couldn't imagine what my life might've been like if I hadn't met him. He once told me that if he had to relive that day a second time, even if it meant ending up in the past and knowing what would happen, he still would've done it. If he had…if he had known how he was going to pass away, he would've tried to change it. Rather than think about the way he died, it's easier to remember the way he lived."

-x-

As Ritsuko decided to look into Shiruba Kirigoe's background, the base started to rumble.

"Tremors," she sighed; for the last two years (for some unexplained reason), the Geo-Front and Tokyo-3 had been experiencing random tremors every now and then.

Then, the base shook again.

"Doctor Akagi!" Maya shouted at the faux-blond. "We have a problem!"

As she was led back to the bridge in Central Dogma, Gendo (who was hoping that nobody would know of the head injury he received from trying to harm his older daughter-in-law) and Fuyutsuki had gone back to the bridge, as well.

"These tremors have been acting up more often than they had last month," Hyuga revealed, showing the holographics on the monitor in front of him. "This new graph represents the minutes between each tremor that happens."

"Wait a minute, shouldn't these tremors occur days and weeks of each other?" Misato asked him.

"Those were the old graphs. This is now."

"But we shouldn't have any earthquakes at all in this region," went Shigeru.

"No, earthquakes are random, no matter what where you reside. These tremors have been consistent and increasing in their lengths. We still can't find the epicenter."

When Asuka returned with Mariko, the base shook again, knocking most of the personnel to the floor. The redhead was finding these periodic tremors to be quite bothersome (and the strangest thing of it all was that she was certain that these hadn't ever happened before).

 _It must be because Shinji ended in the past and tried to change the present,_ she suspected. _For every action he tried to take, there was a reaction to his choices._

Suddenly, the alarms went off like crazy. Something serious was wrong.

"There's been a breach in Terminal Dogma!" Someone yelled out.

At first, Misato wanted to suspect that the breach was Kaji, but then she noticed that he was on the bridge with her.

Boom. It was silent, but that only meant that it happened far away from where they were; an explosion from within the base.

"Movement within Terminal Dogma," another person revealed. "There's something big in there."

"An Angel?" Gendo demanded to know.

"There's no blue pattern detected."

Boom. Another explosion deep within the base came, and some of the men and women suspected that they were coming from Terminal Dogma.

"The movement in Terminal Dogma…is heading towards Central Dogma," a woman informed the others. "It's moving through past the elevator systems."

The base began to shake again, but not because of a tremor. It was from whatever large thing was inside the base.

"Aaaaahh!" They started hearing people scream as they began to vacate. "Run! Get outta here!"

-x-

A large, scythe-like arm burst from the ground within the Geo-Front, followed by another large limb. And then a head, similar to the flying creature that had attacked earlier and was forced to flee by Godzilla's return, emerged from the ground, carrying something that looked like a person, but of similar size to the creature. In less than three minutes, the creature had vacated the crater it emerged from, allowing the fleeing personnel of NERV to get a better look at it. It was similar in every way to the flying creature that Godzilla chased after, but much larger and lacking wings, instead having an additional pair of limbs for locomotion.

When Gendo saw the creature hanging within its mouth, he, along with Fuyutsuki and Ritsuko, immediately recognized it as Lilith, being devoured.

"Grrrrrrrrrraaaurgh!" The creature shrieked, and consumed the last of Lilith.

"My God," went Asuka, never believing that such a creature could appear from within the base and not be an Angel. "That has to be another M.U.T.O."

Because its emergence from within NERV HQ was straight a vertical line from within Terminal Dogma and through Central Dogma, all that they had was a large hole that was worse than the Fifth Angel's failed attack on them, but just as similar, so not all of the base was damaged. Before either Units-00 or 02 could even be suggested of launching to intercept this creature from escaping, it began to demonstrate some form of levitation and began tearing chunks of the artificial ceiling away to climb through to the surface.

"Aaaaurgh!" It shrieked again, and something fell from it.

It was big, purple, and had seven eyes in front of a inverted triangle. The mask of Lilith.

"Uh, Mrs. Ikari," went Fuyutsuki to Mariko, who was holding onto Shiruba's left hand as they watched the creature get away. "Did Shinji ever face a creature like this before?"

"He never told me of facing a creature like this before," she answered him. "I saw him face a giant spider and mantis, but nothing like this. Absolutely nothing like this."

Even with Adam in his possession, Gendo now knew he couldn't implement his version of the Human Instrumentality Project. He had lost Unit-01's core, his wife, and now Lilith. He wanted to blame Shinji and his family for taking away everything, for living, for supporting that brat that defied him at every turn when he ended up in the Nineteen-Fifties. Mankind had been locked in a dead-end, unable to move forward, even by moving backwards.

"He was right," went Asuka, thinking about what Shinji had written in his diary.

"Who was right?" Mariko asked her.

"Shinji," she explained, "about what he learned in the past. Mankind's arrogance."

"The eternal arrogance of mankind…is thinking we have the forces of Mother Nature in our control…when it's the other way around."

"What can we do to stop this thing?"

"A man once told Shinji something that he once told me. It was that nature, despite all of its darkest secrets, has an order to everything that exists. A power to restore the balance of life."

"Well, then we need that power now."

To be continued…

A/N: What do you think going to happen now? A M.U.T.O. with the essence of Lilith inside it, an Ebirah with the power of Zeruel, and another M.U.T.O. with Shamshel's core. Things are escalating beyond anyone's control.


	12. Salvage

Creation began on 11-21-15

Creation ended on 02-28-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Salvage

It had been an hour after the creature that had consumed Lilith and left the Geo-Front, causing minor destruction as it left Tokyo-3, and was also emitting electromagnetic pulses to disable electrical systems around it.

"We were fortunate that the MAGI were undamaged when it left," said Ritsuko, evaluating the minor damage caused by the creature they were left to deduce was some sort of M.U.T.O. or Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism, based on the designation from Shinji's memoirs. "Unfortunately, it was emitting enough EMP that we're left in the dark."

"You rely on digital technology here for everything?" Mariko asked the faux-blond.

"The requirements for non-digital technology were suspended after a blackout two months ago."

"After the Ninth Angel attack?"

"Is there anything about NERV that you don't know of?"

"Only what my husband confided in me about you. He even mentioned an incident involving a robot powered by a nuclear reactor. If that was a creature that thrived in radioactive environments, I'm surprised it didn't show up then."

"How can you be so calm about such a dangerous threat right now?"

"Because I'm older. I don't have the luxury of panicking like I did when I was younger."

"And Shinji married you?"

Mariko gave Ritsuko a frown that seemed similar to Shinji's, only less directed.

"Are you married…or widowed?" She asked her.

"Never had the pleasure," Ritsuko answered her. "I view a relationship, even a romantic one, as being illogical. We're in a war with an enemy that wants to exterminate the human race. Love becomes a distraction that can get you killed."

"Now, that's illogical right there, Ms. Akagi," Mariko told her. "What you just said. Too much intellect and no heart, no emotion. Do you mean to say that there is nobody in your life, even in the slightest degree, that matters to you?"

Ritsuko looked away from her, not even bothering to answer the question.

Mariko sighed and walked away from her.

"A person that lacks the bonds formed with others is a person with no soul," she uttered.

Unbeknownst to the two, Rei had overheard the whole conversation…and believed the widow of Shinji when she said that. Before meeting Shinji, she only knew Commander Ikari, but even that felt lacking of a bond.

"…But why is her hair blue?" She then heard the girl that was being looked after by the widow.

"I don't know why," Mariko told Shiruba. "Some people just want to stand out among others."

-x-

"…This is all we have on the new M.U.T.O.," said the Navy officer to the personnel in the room on the carrier as Kenji saw the creature on a video recording taken by a UAV of the creature as it caused damage leaving Tokyo-3.

"It's almost as big as Godzilla," went Hana to Kenji. "It's far bigger than the other one."

"But this one doesn't have any wings on it," added the carrier's commander, a woman with blond hair. "It also looks too heavy for powered flight."

That's when Hana suggested, "Black Widow, Kenji?"

"What does she mean by that?" The commander asked him.

"A female," he explained. "Some species of animal will always have a female being larger than the male. This creature is no exception to that rule."

"Then, that would make the first one that appeared a male of the species."

"And it was located in the Nevada desert, inside the nuclear waste repository."

"What is that, Kenji?" Hana asked her guardian.

"It's where the Americans store all of their hazardous materials," he answered her.

"You think these two will meet up, eventually?"

"It's inevitable."

-x-

"…So far, Units-02 and 03 are intact," Shigeru informed Misato. "Unfortunately, Unit-00 got damaged extensively in the M.U.T.O.'s escape."

As the wreckage around the Evas was being cleared away, the MAGI was being worked on to ensure that what was left of NERV was still operational. Unfortunately, even if NERV was left intact after the M.U.T.O. appeared, it took the one thing that had acted as a lure to the Angels when it went and devoured Lilith.

Fuyutsuki took it upon himself to escort Mariko and Shiruba back to Nagoya, despite Gendo's assurance (which was really just him wanting to keep Shinji's widow and her ward around to try and manipulate as some sort of leverage) that NERV couldn't waste any time and personnel to escort the Third Child's widow and her ward back to Nagoya.

" _Ikari, we crossed a line when you had them brought here against their will,"_ he told Gendo before he left the Geo-Front with the two. _"Your son wanted to protect his family from NERV and the Eva…and you tried to involve them just because the core of Unit-01 was disposed of by Shinji and he took the whereabouts of it to the grave with him. I may not agree with all of what he did when he made the decision to render Unit-01 useless, but I can understand the reason to why he did it. He might've been unable to escape the would-be legacy of his parents, but he did his best to make sure his children and their children wouldn't be tied to the same fate he had been ever since that day the contact experiment was performed. It's completely moot to drag in people that he never wanted involved in this type of life when he was happier with them being average civilians like office assistants or school teachers. Unless, of course, you have no excuse but to despise his children and grandchildren simply because they're his."_

" _That's crossing a line right there,"_ Gendo had retorted.

" _But you crossed it first. You're the only one crossing it. Accept this truth, Ikari. These descendants of Shinji's don't know anything about Unit-01's missing core. His wife knows nothing about the missing core. Harassing them will get you nowhere."_

It was after that conversation that the Sub-Commander declared that he would take them back to Nagoya himself, since he had time to waste.

-x-

"…It's not really any of my business," Fuyutsuki said to Mariko as he drove her and Shiruba to Tokyo-3's airport, "but what kind of man was your husband like?"

Mariko, looking outside the passenger window, uttered, "When he wasn't facing creatures from another time and ecosystem? He was dedicated to our children's upbringing and a quiet soul. One time, our youngest daughter, Rikka, was reaching up on a counter for the cookie jar, and she fell off. He caught her, but ended up skinning his wrists when he crashed into the refrigerator. He needed over a dozen bandages and at least eight stitches, but he never scolded Rikka. She unintentionally caused him harm, but he looked the other way. Parents suffer for their children."

"And…uh…did he ever laugh?"

"Many times…except towards the end of his life after that calamity that could've been prevented. He didn't laugh as much. To be honest, I don't laugh as much, either."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Everyone lost someone that mattered so much to their lives."

"And…what's Shiruba's story?"

"She's the daughter of a friend I lost a while back. I wasn't able to tell Shinji this, but Shiruba's related to the family that motivated him to face the Godzilla from Nineteen-Fifty-Four."

"She's from the family that was among the families Shinji saved from Godzilla?"

"It probably would've gave him a heart attack if he had found out."

So far, Fuyutsuki just felt more regret over Shinji being drafted into NERV's affairs. And the only good that ever came out of his involvement with the paramilitary agency was his getting stranded in the past before Second Impact and having a family of his own that just seemed larger and better than the one he had been a part of before the Twelfth Angel incident. It was intense regret.

"A demon in armor," went Shiruba, getting Fuyutsuki's attention. "That's what my aunt would always say she saw when she was little. A demon wrapped in armor that fought a dinosaur that could breathe a poisonous fire. I didn't believe in such a thing until I saw it on television earlier this year. A demon that was wrapped in armor."

And by "demon wrapped in armor", Fuyutsuki knew Shiruba meant Unit-01, since it was, of course, a demon wrapped in armor in its appearance. A horned demon wrapped in armor. He originally thought of the Eva as mankind's salvation from the nothingness of Third Impact, but now he wasn't sure what to think of that particular Eva that had been used to defend the nation from giant monsters.

"Yeah," he agreed with her. "It was a demon wrapped in armor."

-x-

"…Well, with the large hole in the base, I guess we don't have to worry much about the life support system, since we're getting a lot of air down here," went Maya as she and the other technicians were able to get the MAGI back in working order.

"Yeah, but the large hole also means that anyone can get inside the base without authorization," went Shigeru to her, stating an obvious possibility that could happen.

"NERV can't hide this mayhem from the public, anyway," added Hyuga, as the agency couldn't keep the press from knowing, even if their PR crew tried to hush things up. "Looks like we won't be dealing with just the Angels, anymore."

Misato had heard their conversation and believed Hyuga when he said that. NERV was tasked solely with Angels, not these…monsters that Shinji had faced in the past, even if these…M.U.T.O.s were creatures he had never encountered before. Of course, the same would also apply to an army if they were invaded by people armed to the teeth and ready for war, as NERV's personnel had no training against any human enemies.

"Well, we're bound to be investigated soon, Katsuragi," she heard Kaji say to her.

She looked at him and saw him with a bandage on his forehead.

"What happened to you?" She asked him.

"It turns out that Shinji's widow isn't one to flirt with."

"You tried to flirt with Shinji's wife? Now I know you're crazy. She's in her seventies, way older than you, and was married. I'm starting to wonder if she hit you with her arm or her cane. Asuka informed me that she used her cane on Commander Ikari, too."

"It's a habit."

"A bad habit, and one that needs to stop before it gets you into more trouble than you can afford to get into. What were you hoping to get out of her that probably wasn't in Shinji's diaries? She's a civilian that married a kid from the future she believed from the start was from the future…and not to mention is the mother of four of his children and the grandmother of three of his grandchildren…and the great-grandmother of two other kids. You could've gave her a heart attack or something. How else would you have explained her absence to her relatives?"

Kaji then backed away from Misato; he had obviously screwed up when he tried to get information out of a woman that was not just older than him, married to the late Third Child and was clearly not someone interested in being flirted with. The widow had clearly shown her disgust with him when she hit him with her cane after placing a hand on her shoulder.

" _Elder Mariko isn't like some women of today's generation, sir,"_ her ward had told him as he held onto his head. _"You should really take an interest in women that are closer to your age group. You're, what, thirty? In your early-thirties? I'm sure that there are women around that fit into your age group. Elder Mariko is out of your league."_

"I can't believe you tried to flirt with Shinji's wife!" He heard Asuka say to him. "I try flirting with you, and you turn the other way."

-x-

"…We had no knowledge of this…M.U.T.O. being within the base or underneath the Geo-Front," Gendo had informed the SEELE council in the next meeting in his office.

"And this M.U.T.O. devoured Lilith before escaping?" SEELE 01 questioned.

"It did."

"This is bad," went SEELE 10. "Without Lilith, we cannot achieve what we had set out to do."

"Then this entire operation, from before Second Impact to facing the Angels now, has been for naught," added SEELE 07.

Then Gendo suggested that, since that this giant M.U.T.O. was found escaping from NERV, NERV should take direct control of the situation involving it.

"Yet, we're aware that these creatures are able to produce EMPs that disable all electrical devices around them for several miles," said SEELE 05 to Gendo in response to his suggestion that NERV take control, "and this includes the Evas themselves, as they're not equipped with S² Engines. How does NERV intend to handle the situation with creatures that can render our weapons useless?"

Of course, Gendo was at a loss on exactly how to handle the situation without working around the EMPs that hindered them. The only thing that was probably likely to operate without much hindrance was…an abomination that he didn't want getting in his way back when he had Unit-01 intact.

"What of the Japan Heavy Chemical Industries' robot?" He questioned. "The Jet Alone robot?"

"The Jet Alone robot has been decommissioned since its failed demonstration," SEELE 01 explained.

"Has it been dismantled?"

"There's been no time to dismantle the robot," went SEELE 03. "And Japan Heavy Chemical Industries has been clinging to existence after reaching a state of bankruptcy after the failed demonstration."

Then…Gendo needed to come clean with the company's failed demonstration in front of the council.

-x-

"…It looks like the first M.U.T.O.'s heading to this island over in the south," Hana told Kenji and the rest of the people present, pointing down on a map.

"Ever since Second Impact, that's been among the islands that can't be reclaimed because of the nuclear waste left," Kenji revealed, but then realized something else. "It could be going there to consume the nuclear waste as food."

"Will the second one be just as likely to head to this island, despite the head start the flying one has?" The carrier's commander asked him.

"It's possible," he answered.

"What, then?"

"They'll likely get together…and begin an instinctual trait common in most animals."

"Which is?"

"Propagation of the species."

"We need to stop them before they can do that."

-x-

"…Thank you again, Mr. Fuyutsuki," said Mariko to the Sub-Commander once they reached the airport.

As the elder man was getting their plane tickets (the planes were still running, albeit slowly), Shiruba took notice of the mayhem on a television screen displaying the news. There were several fires, car crashes, and she even saw a fallen plane being evacuated of its passengers. She was starting to wonder if a plane ride was the best way back to Nagoya when it was probably better to just return to Sapporo to avoid a repeat performance by that bad man.

"Shiruba?" She heard Mariko say to her. "We may have to travel by boat if we're to get anywhere from here to Nagoya or from here to Sapporo. None of the planes are willing to travel far."

"Okay," she responded. "Should we try to call Mima?"

"Yes."

-x-

"…NERV will be requisitioning the Jet Alone robot," Gendo informed the personnel an hour after his meeting with the SEELE council.

"The Jet Alone?" Misato questioned, as that robot hadn't been seen or thought of in a long time.

"It was decommissioned, but it wasn't deconstructed."

"But it was reported to have an unstable, nuclear core," went Ritsuko, unsure if using a non-Eva was the best way to go.

"It may very well be the only thing able to deal with the M.U.T.O. without being affected by the EMP."

A nuclear-powered machine may have been more effective than one that was purely electric, but because of the threat of radiation, it brought its own danger. In almost just as similar danger as the Evas themselves did.

-x-

Ring! Mima's cell phone rang, and the widowed mother picked up.

"Mima Ikari speaking," she greeted, and then her eyes widened in front of Suki and Aki. "Grandmother? What are you doing in Tokyo-3?"

Suki, laying on her cot, placed her palms upon her small bulge and worried about their grandmother's presence within the city their grandfather once lived in before being displaced in the past where he met her outside of the original Tokyo.

"You met that madman? Did he hurt you?" Mima asked. "You used your cane and struck him on his head? Heh-heh… That was reckless. What? Sapporo? But none of us are there right now. After I got my last call from Ms. Katsuragi, I called Kenji, and we went with him onto a naval carrier. Me, Suki and Kenji are all on it right now. There's something else you should know. Suki called the hospital…and Auntie Rikka was attacked by that man."

Suki was anything but calm right now. Now that their grandmother knew that Gendo had laid the wrong sort of hands on her youngest and surviving child, she was bound to be disgusted by the disgraceful man.

Mima looked at Suki, and told her what Mariko had just informed her.

"She's heading to the hospital to be with your mother," she told her. "Gendo has lost a lot of that agency Grandfather once worked at. It turns out there was a creature underneath them that they were never aware of."

"It doesn't seem like anything is going that monster's way, anymore."

"Nothing has gone that man's way ever since such a thing as a way was discovered."

"Bad things will always happen to bad people," went Aki, adding to the conversation.

-x-

"Mister Fuyutsuki," said Mariko, as they had to work out the alternate route to Sapporo, "did you know that Gendo went to Sapporo recently?"

"No, ma'am," he answered her. "Why?"

"I just found out from my granddaughters that my youngest daughter, Rikka, was assaulted by Gendo."

The elder man bowed his head to her.

"I swear, I didn't know about that," he assured her.

"I believe you," she told him. "Men like Gendo will keep secrets and not give a reason to why they go anywhere that seems unlike what they're normally capable of."

-x-

"…That's strange," Hana said, looking over the recording of the female M.U.T.O. over and over again. "Very strange."

"What's very strange, Hana?" Kenji asked her, looking over maps.

"Based on the size and weight of this M.U.T.O., it seems incapable of long treks, and based on the information from what was collected on where the first one was found, it might also be unable to survive in water."

He looked at the recording that was repeating itself and expressed, "I was doubting this creature would be unable to spread beyond the archipelago's main island. It's likely that if this one wants to breed, it needs the flying one to come back."

"But didn't you say that it was unlikely that these two were the only ones left?"

"Yes, but that was once. My mentor actually visited the site where they were discovered."

"Kenji?"

"Yes?"

"Things are going to get uglier than they are right now, aren't they?"

"Things will always get worse before they even start to get a little better."

-x-

The creature that had attacked and killed Zeruel surfaced and saw a large mass of land in front of it. It sensed a tremendous power source on it, and wanted this power for itself. With a drive it couldn't ignore, the mutated lobster levitated out of the water with its wing-like structures and took flight towards Japan.

-x-

"Okay, the Jet Alone is set to go," said a male technician to Ritsuko Akagi over the phone.

"That's good. Start it up." Ritsuko ordered.

In the hangar where the robot was stored after its failed demonstration, later revealed to have been because of NERV itself, was reactivated and a quick check of its onboard computer indicated its systems were all in the green.

"To think that there were creatures out there than an Evangelion can't deal with, they turn to a decommissioned robot that they didn't want that was trying to spare teenagers mental instability," a woman that was part of the Jet Alone crew expressed. "They must've been crazy."

"Only the ones in charge of it," another man explained. "Everyone else that works there are just clueless to the puppeteers that pull their strings."

The large robot, now animate, took its first steps and walked out of the hangar with a different objective: Locate the creature identified as a M.U.T.O. and destroy it.

To be continued…

A/N: Please, readers, you must review these stories, not just favor and/or follow! How can I know how well you enjoy them if you don't say anything?!


	13. Affairs

Creation began on 02-28-16

Creation ended on 07-26-16

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Affairs

A/N: Seriously, people, what's wrong with wanting reviews?! My _Different from You_ story has over one-hundred, and that's done better than the other stories I've posted! Jeez!

The carrier's alarms went off! This caused Mima and Suki wonder what was going.

"Mommy?" Aki asked, wanting to rise from the table where she did her homework, but was frightened.

Elsewhere on the carrier, Kenji and Hana saw on the screens Godzilla's dorsal spines sinking into the water around it.

"He's diving," a Navy officer informed everyone in the room. "He's also changing course."

"Where to?" The ship's commander questioned.

"It looks like he's returning back to Japan."

"What?" Hana gasped. "But the flying M.U.T.O.'s still en route towards that garbage heap of an island. Since when does a predator just…give up on catching the prey?"

-x-

"…What do you mean, it's gone?" Misato asked a man on the phone, trying to keep up to date on the M.U.T.O. that emerged from the Geo-Front. "But that's impossible. How can something that massive just disappear like that?"

But Kaji was positive that whatever this creature was that Shinji hadn't ever encountered as he had with these other monsters he had mentioned about in his diaries, it was more than capable of just disappearing from sight.

-x-

The United Nations sent in soldiers to aid the Jet Alone to track and destroy the M.U.T.O. that was still in Japan. The last place it was reported seen before it just disappeared was heading towards Mt. Atago of the Chiba Prefecture. Somehow, it just vanished from off every available tracking device being used. There was some suspicion that the creature was using its EMP abilities to evade detection, which left it only visible to visual perception from anyone close enough to see it.

"Does anyone wanna tell me how a giant creature is able to disappear off the radar?" A male soldier asked his fellow comrades as they searched for the M.U.T.O. on foot in the woods surrounding the mountain terrain.

"This is something that NERV should be dealing with," one of them responded.

"Whatever this thing is, it came out of their base," another one reminded them. "I'm telling you, the UN should stop babying that agency. They make a mess, and we get stuck cleaning up after them."

"Hold on awhile. We're about to get the Jet Alone robot to try and flush it out," another soldier informed them.

-x-

The Jet Alone had reached the Mt. Atago terrain, but found no trace of the M.U.T.O., even though it should've been nearby if it desired radiation, which this robot used to be active.

-x-

"…Are you sure it's not there?" Misato questioned the soldier speaking to her over the radio. "It should be there. You should be right on top of it."

"We're looking, but it's not here," the man responded. "There's nothing here to indicate that it was ever here to begin with. No footprints, no fallen trees, nothing."

Suddenly, there was a sound of static and rustling on the soldier's end, causing Misato to wonder if the M. . was in fact really there and not somewhere else.

"Hello? Respond. Is anyone there?" She asked, but received no response.

-x-

The radios ceased working as the M.U.T.O. appeared from beside the mountain, looking as though it had camouflaged itself from sight.

The soldiers ran back and opened fire upon it, emptying their machine guns at its hide.

"Gaaaaaurgh!" It shrieked, not even the least harmed by the bullets that felt like the equivalent of cheap, cotton balls. "Grrraurgh!"

"Quick! Send out the Jet Alone!" Some of them shouted, seeing that their rounds were having no effect on the creature.

The robot showed up, but the M.U.T.O. wasn't the least bit intimidated by its presence. If anything, it was excited to see it here.

It charged towards it and slammed into it, sending it crashing into the mountain beside it.

-x-

"We have a serious problem now," went Ritsuko to Misato, as the tracking signal inside the Jet Alone ceased on Central Dogma's holographic systems.

"Could it have just stopped working?" Misato suggested.

"Jet Alone has just become another nuclear buffet table for a creature we don't know anything about."

-x-

The Jet Alone was ripped in half by the M.U.T.O., like it was a cheaply-made rag doll, and its power source, its precious reactor that would've supplied it with over one-hundred consecutive days of uninterrupted electricity…was drained completely by the creature's smaller limbs under its larger ones.

The soldiers left felt fortunate enough that they weren't exposed to any fallout when the robot was destroyed, but had to retreat, to inform their superiors of the failed mission and try to come up with a new strategy.

"The Jet Alone didn't even do anything," one of the survivors expressed as they fled.

"Is there nothing that can stop these things?!" Another one demanded.

-x-

The flying M.U.T.O. had made it to its destination and landed atop a hill, digging its front limbs into the contaminated soils.

"Grrruaargh!" It shrieked, glowing a bright green as the ground around glowed bright red.

-x-

"…Look at this radioactivity!" Shigeru gasped in front of the rest of the bridge crew, detecting signs of radiation on an island far from the main island of Japan. "It's off the charts!"

But as quickly as it showed up on the holographic displays, it disappeared, leaving them questioning what had happened on that island that was a nuclear graveyard for waste materials.

"The radiation levels reached critical mass for a moment, but then dropped to zero," Ritsuko explained, just as confused as they all were. "It's as if…something spiked…and then returned to normal."

"Have you checked for residual radiation?" Misato asked Shigeru, who worked to confirm if there was any radiation on the island it was detected from.

"This is impossible," he expressed. "There's nothing there, anymore."

"What?" Ritsuko responded.

"The radiation levels. They're so low, they're nonexistent." Shigeru revealed.

"How is that possible?" Maya asked him.

"How the Hell should I know?"

-x-

It barely constituted a meal, but the flying M.U.T.O. had gained, considerably, more strength from absorbing the nuclear material that littered the entire island through its body rather than through direct ingestion like it had with the strange sphere that it had consumed when it emerged. It grew larger than expected, now almost ninety meters in height, and its smaller limbs under its primary ones had extended beyond their initial length. The wings had thickened and appeared to be razor-sharp, as well.

Spreading its wings, it took to the air again with the aim to return to the other landmass where it was forced to retreat after meeting that creature that it felt an inexplicable hostility towards.

"Graaaaurgh!" It roared as it flew faster than ever before.

-x-

"…Well," went Hana to Kenji, discovering that the flying M.U.T.O. had consumed an entire island littered with radioactive waste in less than five minutes, "we can look on a potential bright side. That island could be habitable later on."

Kenji knew she was just trying to lighten the mood for them, but it didn't mean much to soldiers or those that give their lives to serve their nations.

"It looks like it's heading back to Japan," he told them. "Instead of the female seeking out the male, it's the reversal."

"Do you think Godzilla realized this and decided to go after the female instead?" Hana asked him.

"With this alpha predator, I'm not certain of anything."

-x-

It was a miracle that they were able to get to Sapporo, as Mariko entered the hospital room assigned to her ill daughter. She had invited Fuyutsuki in with her to meet Rikka.

Fuyutsuki was surprised that he was in the same room with not just a widow associated with Shinji, but he was there with their youngest daughter, too. He would've felt that he needed to say a greeting to Rikka, but she was asleep, recuperating from her attack by Gendo, her paternal grandfather with relationship issues and an obsession with his wife.

Mariko sat down in front of the unconscious woman and took hold of her right hand.

"She seems to be sleeping peacefully right now," Fuyutsuki told her.

"Out of my two daughters, she looked the most peaceful when asleep," she revealed. "I still remember the day Shinji defended her from a bunch of protesters that thought she was at a healthcare clinic for an abortion. I don't think Rikka ever saw her father the same way ever since that day."

Suddenly, Rikka slowly opened her eyes and looked up at Mariko, surprising her.

Mariko looked at her, hoping that she would say something to her, anything to indicate that she was at least recovering from the attack on her by Gendo.

"Mommy," she spoke, "Daddy's not here, anymore, is he?"

Fuyutsuki was shocked by her question to her mother. He knew that she was suffering from Alzheimer's, but the question still had the unintended effect of hitting the emotional layers.

Knock, knock. There was a knock at the open door behind them.

"Elder Ikari," a man, probably in his late-thirties, with short, ebony hair and heterochromia (his left eye was blue and his right eye was brown), dressed in a tan business suit, asked Mariko. "Is Rikka alright?"

"Fuma," Mariko went, addressing Suki's Husband. "She just woke up."

The man, Fuma, bowed his head to both the elder Ikari ladies and Fuyutsuki.

"Suki's husband," Rikka uttered. "Is…my daughter alright?"

-x-

"… I don't see any other alternative than what the Second Child revealed," Ritsuko expressed to Misato and the Bridge Bunnies as they tried to work with limited power in NERV HQ. "Conventional weaponry has proven ineffective. The Jet Alone did nothing. We can't use the Evas against these creatures. We're left with nuclear weaponry as a last resort."

"Except these creatures are said to feed off radiation," Misato responded, "and an attempt to kill a Godzilla this way was tried over sixty years ago…with no success."

"Except that was Godzilla, not these…M.U.T.O.s. And we're talking a stronger yield than what was used back then. At least eight times the yield of what Hiroshima was."

 _But that's insane,_ Misato realized, she was reminded of the nightmarish result of Second Impact and found using nuclear weaponry to result in a similar outcome if used anywhere else.

Even Maya was left appalled by the plan to use nuclear weapons to eliminate the threat.

-x-

Ebirah, no longer bound to a watery existence, emerged from ocean and traversed onto Japanese soil. The new source of energy it felt was feeling was close by.

"Eeeeeh!" It shrieked, now levitating off the ground; ever since it consumed that core belonging to the Angel, it gained access to its abilities. "Eeeeehh!"

"Grrrraaurgh!" A cry from afar was heard, and Ebirah knew where to go to find it.

-x-

"…With Unit-00 damaged, we're left with either transferring the core into Unit-03 or finding a suitable pilot for Unit-03," said Maya to Misato as the remnants of the work crew worked on salvaging the Unit-00 core from the damaged behemoth that laid buried under debris.

"After the larger M.U.T.O. went through Tokyo-3 to get away, some of the people are leaving," Misato revealed; even after the repelling of the Angel by Mothra and Leo, most of the stores and schools had been shut down until further notice.

"I don't think finding another pilot's going to matter if we can't overcome the EMP waves. Even simply turning our devices off won't guarantee they'll be kept protected from getting fried."

"If you have any other suggestions, I'm open to them."

"Only one possibility. That animal that attacked the flying M.U.T.O. earlier and chased after it."

"Godzilla."

"Yeah, Godzilla. What was it that Shinji's wife said when the larger M.U.T.O. left? That nature has an order and a power to restore balance?"

"Yeah, she said that. What are you getting at with Godzilla?"

"Maybe it's the power that nature uses to restore balance. What if it's here to stop the M.U.T.O.s and the Angels?"

Misato didn't think of it that way. But if Ibuki was right, then maybe, just maybe, there would be no need for the use of nuclear bombs to deal with the M.U.T.O.s. And it would spare any civilian location from possible fallout.

"Except we'd be relying on a creature beyond our understanding, that we can't control," she had to admit. "Then again, we'd been relying on the Evas, and we can barely control them from time to time."

"But the only advantage Godzilla would give is that it can't be effected by EMPs." Maya expressed.

-x-

In the caves of Infant Island, inaccessible by ordinary people, the Shobijin looked at the cave paintings as they depicted various creatures that had been encountered by people over the decades. As Mothra and Leo prepared to fly out and meet their latest foes, the little ladies noticed how the paintings of select creatures began to glow brightly. The red one examined a painting of a winged reptile while the blue one examined the painting of what appeared to be some sort of turtle-like creature.

"The survivors," the red one expressed to the blue one.

"They will return in due time," responded the blue one, just as a painting of a strange, quadruped creature with what looked like spikes on its back glowed. "They feel the danger that exist and will attempt to restore the disorder."

Then Mothra and Leo took flight. The battle yet to come was approaching ever so closer.

To be continued…

A/N: Any guesses on how many monsters will be expected?


	14. Halloween Memory

Creation began on 10-31-17

Creation ended on 10-31-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: Halloween Memory

A/N: I blame gunman for this idea, but now I want to post a Halloween story before midnight. Here goes something.

"…So, you mean to say that you have never gone out for Halloween?" A young Mariko Ikari of the year Nineteen-Fifty-Five asked the time-displaced Shinji Ikari as they walked out among the people that were running around dressed as pirates and samurai and geishas. "Not once?"

"My teacher who was my guardian didn't believe in Halloween being a good thing to celebrate due to the trouble that occurs on that one night," Shinji, dressed as a samurai with a wooden sword. "Car accidents, toilet paper on the streets, disappearances and so on. This may very well be my first Halloween. Ever."

Mariko, dressed as a shrine maiden, reached into her plastic cauldron and pulled out a piece of candy.

"One of the best things about Halloween, Shinji, is the free candy and the laughter of children as they run around in the night. People singing and dancing. And look at everyone out here after that night last year. It's beginning to feel like a long time since you arrived that evening and fought Godzilla. You're practically the very reason Tokyo still has Halloween. This is a time of joy and fun. If this is truly your first Halloween, then you must fill each moment with candy and excitement."

"This way! This way!" A little girl dressed as an orange and yellow oni yelled as she and several boys, also dressed as oni, ran past Shinji and Mariko. "More candy this way!"

Shinji couldn't help but smile when he saw the younger people of a time he was now part of. It felt like a dream he just didn't want to wake up from yet. A strange, pleasant, scary…and beautiful dream meant just for him. As he accepted the piece of candy from Mariko, started to feel like this was really his first Halloween he had ever known, something that was, just like everything else in his life right now since appeared in Nineteen-Fifty-Four, not connected to NERV, the Angels, his father or anything and anyone he knew in Twenty-Fifteen. Just a…clean slate, a fresh start.

"You know something, Mariko," he uttered, "this is my first Halloween ever. Will you help me to enjoy it before it ends?"

She smiles and take his left hand.

"Only if you can protect this maiden with your mighty, wooden sword from the legion of scary oni, follower of the samurai," she offered.

"If by my life or my death I can protect from the demons that walk among us tonight, I will fight for you, my fair lady," he responded. "You have my wooden sword."

-x-

 _Present Day_

Asuka once again found herself shedding tears as she read the memory of Shinji's first Halloween in the past. She felt like he had the best night of his life, and had shared it with the woman that would eventually become his wife.

"Shinji," she sighed. "Everyday I read more of your past, the more I wish you were still here. Even if you were old, it'd be enough just to see you, talk to you."

To be continued…

A/N: Happy Halloween, readers!


	15. War

Creation began on 07-26-16

Creation ended on 12-01-17

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Hope from the Future: War

The ground began to tremble at an unknown forest location. One of the hills fell apart as something emerged from underneath it.

"Aaaaaurgh!" A large creature bellowed as it shook off the dirt on its body, revealing itself to the world. "Aaaurgh!"

It must've been about fifty-sixty meters in height from head to toe, and nearly one-hundred-sixty meters in length from head to tail. There were spikes on its back that formed a carapace of sorts, which may have contributed to its quadruped state, and a pair of spikes at the end of its tail.

"Aaaaurgh!" It roared, crawling on the ground, heading towards the destination that beckoned it to get to in due time.

-x-

"What the Hell?!" Aoba gasped, seeing the new creature emerge from the ground from his console. "What is this?!"

"Is that an Anguirus?" Maya questioned.

"A what?" Hyuga responded. "You mean, Shinji encountered a creature like this in the past, too?!"

"For a long time, people were confused about what it was. Some wanted to call it a mutated ankylosaurus while others wanted to call it a mutated armadillo. It was later confirmed that it was a prehistoric creature that survived to modern times."

"Well, apparently, this one survived, too."

The alarms went off again, indicating that another anomaly had manifested elsewhere.

"Something's rising out of the water at the Kii Peninsula," Shigeru announced, and everyone present saw the new creature. "What the Hell is this?! It's like some sort of convention!"

At first, NERV's younger members thought that the monster emerging from the ocean was some sort of Angel, but realized that it didn't give off a blue pattern. Then, due to its appearance, assumed it was some sort of giant snake, but were again deceived because it possessed four limbs, arms and legs. Only Asuka and Maya were smart enough to identify the creature because they studied it from Shinji's videos and diaries.

"Manda," said Asuka. "A Manda survived Second Impact, as well."

Misato couldn't believe that Shinji had fought a monster that resembled and had to be, for intents and purposes, an Asian dragon.

"Heeeep!" The creature, Manda, hissed, crawling over the ruins of the city where the Angel Israfel was encountered earlier.

It had to be at least three-hundred meters in length, probably able to wrap around an immobile Evangelion with ease.

"It's just like the Shobijin said," Misato realized. "other monsters that survived Second Impact would return in due time."

"Only question is how many of them?" Ritsuko added.

-x-

Fuyutsuki decided to call Major Katsuragi over Dr. Akagi after he stepped out of the hospital and onto its courtyard. He hoped that the situation back at NERV was still under some degree of management after he escorted Mariko and Shiruba back to Sapporo.

"This is Katsuragi," he heard the purple-haired woman on the other end.

"This is Fuyutsuki," he responded. "How are things at HQ?"

"Sub-Commander Fuyutsuki, things are pretty split between two choices after the discovery of other monsters from before Second Impact started showing up on what's left of Japan. Doctor Akagi and the Second Child want to use nuclear weapons against the M.U.T.O.s, but others of the personnel believe that Godzilla is the better option over something so extreme."

"And what do you think?"

"Professionally, the option that causes the least degree of destruction is the favorable choice."

"What about personally?"

"Personally…I just wish I knew what Shinji would say during a time like this."

Fuyutsuki sighed and expressed, "He'd probably believe in what he learned from his time displacement and relationships with people from the past, including his wife."

"That nature has an order…and a power to restore balance."

"A power like Godzilla."

"At least seven other monsters have appeared."

-x-

Other parts of the world were beginning to hear about what was happening in Japan when word got out that Godzilla had returned. It stirred up old tales about how the archipelago was often subjected to attacks from various creatures that they weren't sure were real or not due to the manipulated public knowledge and the fact that not many people spoke of these events. Tales of animals as big as buildings, resembling either large insects or dinosaurs, either captured or exterminated by a man-made giant that supposedly appeared in the nineteen-fifties, a secret organization tasked by the world governments to search for, study, and contain or dispose of creatures from previous eras of world that have found ways to endure to the modern era.

When another creature emerged from the ocean onto the archipelago that was stated to be some sort of turtle with a length of twenty meters, everyone was wondering if Japan had become the location of some sort of monster convention.

-x-

"…We got Manda, Anguirus, Rodan, Ebirah, Gorosaurus, Varan, Baragon, and now a Kamoebas," went Asuka, unable to believe that these creatures have returned after Godzilla and the two M.U.T.O.s and Mothra and Leo shortly did.

On the screens, the pterodactyl creature, Rodan, almost sixty meters in height with a wingspan of eighty meters, flew across the air over the remains of Tokyo before landing atop the ruins of a building.

"It looks like the monsters are converging on Tokyo," said Ritsuko.

"Then…Tokyo's going to be where it all goes down?" Shigeru wondered.

"Something big is going to happen there," Misato suspected. "Suddenly, it seems like Tokyo is the place to be."

-x-

"…Grr," grumbled the ruler of an island that could never be claimed by mankind as they looked up at the sky, seeing a large bug flying towards them. "Grr!"

-x-

"Did Shinji see any other creatures during his time in the past and when he was employed by Monarch, Asuka?" Misato asked the redhead as she went through the boy's diaries again.

"Yeah, but he had to go to a place in the Pacific to find them," she answered. "Some creatures, he didn't see, but some were creatures he either had to fight…or defend with the Eva."

She turned to a page in one diary and showed Misato what was not a very detailed drawing, but made plenty of sense when you looked at it from a good angle. The drawing looked subtle, possibly faded, but showed a horned figure in a battle with a large reptile and a large…hairy man?

"What are they?" Misato asked her.

"The hairy man is called Kong," Asuka answered, "and the reptile is called a Skull Crawler, but Shinji called it the Skull Devil on account of its size making it far bigger than the rest he saw while on this island that he only stated in a photojournalist woman's words on how people simply didn't belong there at all."

"Kong?"

"He was the king of Skull Island, a god and protector to the people that did live there. When Shinji wrote how he saw Kong, he claimed that he saw another god among monsters that walked in the modern world while belonging to a world that was theirs. Like many deities he learned to believe in that were from the past he got stranded in, he believed in Kong being a benevolent king…and Skull Island was his domain."

"But…what was Kong, specifically?"

"A mighty ape…that stood like a man. Hence why he drew Kong as a hairy man."

"When was this?"

"In the Nineteen-Seventies. Monarch, due to the aid of Landsat during that time, discovered Skull Island and went to investigate it for MUTOs, since their mission was to locate, study and preserve certain unexplained orders of nature that were hidden in the world, and Shinji needed to go in case the team venturing them required the aid of the Eva, which could now function for up to an hour when fully charged. Some creatures there, though, he could've gone a lifetime without having to see a second time, and the Skull Crawlers were among those creatures."

"Well, the reason I'm asking is because…is there any possibility of creatures like this…Kong coming for whatever's going to happen in what remains of Tokyo?"

Asuka closed the diary and asked, "Professional opinion or personal assumption?"

"Both."

"Professionally, I'd find any creature like Kong, who would undoubtedly be much bigger than from when Shinji first saw him, showing up to fight other monsters to be unlikely unless his domain were threatened. But personally… Yeah, I think we can expect something like Kong to show up and fight. Even money says that time and distance won't matter when determination says all that needs to be said if you're a colossal beast from an ancient era."

"Is there anything else that Shinji wrote in his diaries that you've become versed in that we should know about?"

"Yeah, something this American man, William Randa, once told him. It was about how the Earth doesn't belong to people, that these ancient creatures ruled the planet long before our ancestors ever showed up…and that it's only a matter of when the survivors will return to reclaim it."

"But did he believe him?"

Asuka reopened the diary she was reading and scrolled through the written kanji and found that, despite believing only part of what Randa stated about the ancient creatures having dominion over the world long ago, didn't believe that they would just come back and take it from the human race.

"Only that they once ruled it," she told her. "Shinji, may his spirit soar forever, wanted to believe in the possibility of equality and toleration towards the ancient species that weren't a complete threat to people, like Kong or the second Godzilla he fought after it was apprehended and kept in check."

"He actually believed in that?" Misato asked.

"Mothra, Kong, both friendly monsters that could tolerate the presence of people that worshipped as gods in their own right. Godzilla, a king in his own right and somewhere in the gray area due to being an engine of destruction half the time, but can't be held to human standards of good or bad."

"Even when he was fighting the second Godzilla, he admired the species?"

"I think he only admired how people that witnessed what they were capable of viewing them as living gods. He even wrote down what Godzilla's name translated into."

"Godzilla has a translation?"

"Just one. On Odo Island, where the Nineteen-Fifty-Four Godzilla was first encountered on land, the original name, Gojira, means 'God incarnate'. An…'incarnation of God', if you will."

"God incarnate? This is a whole, new world we're living in that Shinji opened the door to. It's no longer a world of people. It's a world of gods…and monsters."

-x-

With the sole exception of using nuclear weapons, NERV, unofficially, had no cards left to play against the MUTOs…or any of these surviving monsters that started to resurface after many years of absence. They couldn't use the Evas on account of the EMP abilities of the MUTOs, the Jet Alone had proven virtually useless in fighting the big one that had eaten Lilith, and their non-nuclear arsenal was depleted. There was, practically, nothing more they could do…and Gendo hated this. He hated not being in control of the current situation that seemed to be a true act of God beyond any form of belief.

He hadn't received any further contact from SEELE or the UN, but he felt that could change at any given time, and they'd want an explanation on how best to handle the situation that was progressing even further into the realms of insanity. Even if he still had Adam, without Lilith, there would be no means of achieving Human Instrumentality, meaning that all of mankind had been trapped in an inescapable, evolutionary dead end, unable to move forwards or backwards. At first, he wanted to blame his son for all of this, but then he'd be blaming a ghost that got lost in the pre-Second Impact past and tried to prevent it from ever happening. And with no clues as to what Shinji had done with Unit-01's core, he was left to simply assume the unlikely and unforgivable, that the core's disposal was just another way of saying it was destroyed beyond salvation, since nobody seemed to know where it was at all.

-x-

Time was of little importance to Godzilla as he emerged from the ocean and progressed towards Tokyo. Only the utter destruction of his ancient and eternal enemies was important, and he needed all of his strength to take control of the situation before they could overwhelm him and destroy his domain. The only good prey were dead prey.

"Grraurgh!" He roared as he made his presence known for miles.

-x-

The Lilith-empowered MUTO had made it to what was left of Tokyo and stood proudly where Tokyo Tower once stood.

"Aaaurgh!" She shrieked, sensing something deep beneath the ground. "Eeeeeurgh!"

"Uuurgh!" She heard the cry of a familiar creature, something that, instinctively, pleased her.

Looking up, she saw a male of her species flying onto a building's remnants beside her, greeting her.

"Uuurgh!" The male MUTO greeted.

"Aaaaurgh!" She replied.

-x-

"I don't like this," said Shigeru, seeing the two MUTOs together.

"No, but it looks like the monsters gathering are split between two factions," added Misato, noticing something a bit distinct about the creatures that had gathered around what was left of the devastated megacity. "Do you see how they're grouped separately?"

On one side it seemed that the MUTOs, Ebirah and Kamoebas were grouped together, while the other side currently consisted of Rodan, Manda, Varan, Anguirus, Baragon and Gorosaurus.

"They're building their own armies," went Hyuga in realization.

"They're definitely preparing for war," Ritsuko also realized, "but why aren't they fighting now?"

"A ceasefire, maybe?" Kaji suggested. "Maybe neither side is ready to fight, so they're waiting for everyone left to show up."

"No army simply waits for everyone to show up."

"Well, these aren't human armies, Ritsuko," went Misato to her. _But as long as they're still gathering their forces, there's still time to find other solutions on how to deal with them._

-x-

"…It doesn't matter how big these creatures are," said SEELE 10 to the rest of the council members during their secret meeting to discuss the matter without Gendo. "There's no chance of any capability of surviving the intense heat of a nuke."

"Even if there was a way of salvaging Lilith from this…M.U.T.O. that ate her, our means to capture or contain the creature are limited…and we were not anticipating any attacks from these…giant monsters," added SEELE 06.

"With no access to the N² explosives, we have no other alternative but the use of nuclear force," SEELE 12 stated.

"Launch the bombers," ordered SEELE 01. "Tokyo is a graveyard. It will be these monsters' grave."

-x-

It was going to be a war to end the ancient feud between the various enemies that were as hazardous to other creatures as they were to the ancestors of those that fought and/or fell to their ancestors. One of the greater aspects of any war, regardless of their lengths, were the strongest of warriors getting involved. The kings and leaders, the generals of battle and the primary carriers of the best solutions to end them. And it was why this war needed the strength of Skull Island's final protector to ensure that whatever threats remained in the world didn't threaten the domain of the sheltered island.

Maybe several of his ancestral enemies would be there. Maybe they wouldn't. Either way, Kong, now fully grown and in full command of his power, was ready to rise up to the challenge.

"Grr," he growled as Mothra prepared to carry him to where the great battle would be.

To be continued…

A/N: In any war, preparation is a must, so even monsters have a need to gather their forces. I'm considering a new poll for after _An Ancient Guardian_ is completed that will relate to why Tokyo will serve as the best place to be for what's going to go down. Until then, patience, readers.


End file.
